Per Caligo Mentis
by starkblast
Summary: Scully wakes up handcuffed in the backseat of a car, missing her memories. As he races to help her, Mulder discovers that they've been dragged into a conspiracy that goes farther than he first thought. The agents must decide whether to dig deeper to expose a company's crimes, or to willingly partake in the deception themselves, a move which could save both their lives.
1. Chapter 1

While investigating a mysterious murder-suicide Mulder believes is linked to a suspect pharmaceutical company, he and Scully get dragged into a dark and confusing plot of experimentation and manipulation. They quickly realize that their lives are in danger- both from within and without.

Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, and the Gunmen aren't mine. I might throw Skinner in later, so neither is he. Everyone else I kind of made up along the way.

Spoilers: None that I can think of. This could be set anywhere in the series, really, but I see it around season 5.

This is my first original X files fic - all I've published so far are post-eps. Hope y'all like it.

XXX

Her mind slid in and out of focus; a hazy, just-under-the-surface state that wasn't quite lucid. Individual distorted details bubbled into her awareness, only to burst and send her slipping back into the same confused semi-consciousness.

A sudden bump jolted her almost awake. _I'm moving._ The thought formed slowly, as if she had to pull it out of a thick, viscous fog surrounding her brain.

And yet, she couldn't move.

Slowly realizing that she had a body, she discovered through the fog that her arms and legs were made of lead. Her head rested heavily on one of her arms, and when she tried to lift it, her entire existence careened nauseatingly sideways, making her sluggishly attempt to reach out for balance. Her hands didn't seem to be able to move, either. Slowly, she lowered her head again, letting the dizzying pounding in her skull abate before struggling to open her eyes.

The world was blurry and dark at first. As she dragged herself out of the fog, the dark shapes nearest to her started to come into focus, and she got the peculiar sense that everything was sideways. Another bump reminded her that she was in motion. A light flashed overhead, and without thinking she lifted her head again to look. The world spun in shuddering spirals, but not before she glimpsed what was above her. She clenched her eyes shut again until the spiraling stopped.

A street light had flashed by as the car carrying her had passed it- at high speeds, if her judgement was anywhere close to sound. It probably wasn't, but she was right.

 _Where am I?_ The car had to be going somewhere.

And then, a far more alarming thought:

 _Who am I?_

She struggled through the fog, trying to access any recent memories. Absolutely nothing came to light. Trying to stay calm, she organized the things that she did know.

 _I'm in the backseat of a moving car._

 _It's night time._

 _I feel like hell. I must have been unconscious. Not asleep._

 _I don't remember anything. I may have been drugged._

She thought these things through several times.

 _I have to sit up and see who's driving._ Maybe that would help her remember. _But what if they're dangerous? What if they mean to hurt me? Or kill me?_

It was a risk she had to take. She pulled herself slowly upright, once again aware that she couldn't move her hands. Glancing up, she found that they were handcuffed around the car door handle. Panic flitted through her hazy mind, cutting a path of precious clarity. Careful not to rattle the handcuffs, she pulled herself the rest of the way up, ignoring the pounding in her head. She sat twisted sideways, hindered by the cuffs, but she could see who was driving the car. He had heard her wake, and turned briefly to face her. His features were those of a man in his mid-thirties; his hair was brown and his face clean-shaven. He had an honest look about him, and by her standards he was handsome, but looks could be deceiving. She knew not to trust him.

He must have seen the fear and confusion on her face. "Easy," he said quietly. "No one's going to hurt you."

He turned back to the road, instead twisting his rear view mirror so he could see her while he drove. "What's the last thing you remember?"

She looked warily at his eyes in the mirror, then out the window. They were on an empty highway that cut through a vast, dark expanse of tree-littered farmland. "I don't remember anything," she admitted, still unsure if she could trust him. "Where are you taking me?"

His eyes flashed to hers in the mirror, looking concerned. He'd heard the mistrust plain in her voice. "Someplace safe," he assured her. "I'll do my best to fill you in when we get there."

She studied his face in the mirror, feeling like she should know it. "Who are you?"

His hands clenched on the steering wheel. He didn't look back, but in the mirror she saw him shut his eyes for a moment. "Jesus," he said under his breath. After a moment he composed himself and met her eyes in the mirror.

"Scully, it's me. Mulder. I don't know how long this amnesia will last, but I need you to stay calm and trust me, ok?"

She frowned. "Scully…." she said to herself. The name was pulling at the edges of the blanket covering her memories. Hazy thoughts of her family and early life floated into reach.

"That's right," the man named Mulder said encouragingly. "Your name is Dana Katherine Scully. You're a medical doctor and an FBI agent. My name is Fox Mulder. I'm your partner, and your friend."

She held his eyes in the mirror for a moment, letting his words sink in through the fog.

"Come on, Scully, help me out," He was still trying to sound encouraging, but it came out more like a plea. "I know you're in there."

The way he looked at her made it clear that he couldn't stand the idea of her not remembering him. The edge of the blanket tugged a little more.

"If you're my friend, why did you handcuff me to your car?" she asked cautiously. She wanted to trust him, but the handcuffs were definitely a hard thing to get over. Although they did fit with his FBI story.

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Scully." The way he said her name was familiar, comfortable. "I had no choice. "I couldn't take the chance that you'd try to hurt yourself, or me. You were given a very powerful drug, a hallucinogen which caused you to act violent, and apparently effected your memory."

He paused, searching her eyes for signs of recognition or remembrance. He could tell she was trying.

Scully considered his words. "How do I know you- ah!"

Mulder's eyes flew to her face in the mirror as her question choked off into a cry of pain.

She collapsed forward, clutching at her head with her fettered hands. Her skull exploded with pain and her body seized momentarily.

"Scully!" His voice was sharp with alarm but he didn't stop driving.

This was a repeat episode for Mulder. He'd hoped that when she woke this time, capable at least of holding a careful conversation with him, that the fits would have passed. Unfortunately, this was not the case. He hoped that he was doing the right thing by driving her into the middle of nowhere, away from the men he knew could be searching for them already. He hoped that Scully's own speculation about what they were dealing with proved to be true, and the drug would wear off after no more than 24 hours. He hoped that she would fall unconscious again before the violent urge that had been programmed into her took hold, and that next time she woke she would regard him with confused familiarity instead of bewildered terror or murderous rage. He hoped for many things.

"Hang in there, Scully," he said, his voice pained as she groaned through clenched teeth from the backseat. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her back arching in pain.

Images flashed through her mind, less as returning memories than as attacks by the drug that was wreaking havoc on her systems.

She was in a dark room, tied to a chair and struggling against men that held her still as one of them pushed a syringe into a vein in her left arm.

They couldn't make her do it, she was yelling, her voice thick with fear and desperation. The man with the syringe only laughed.

Scully cringed in the back seat, suddenly wishing that her memories would stay buried.

The next one, however, brought a flood of others with it. She had just regained consciousness, and Mulder was crouched next to her, his features etched with concern. He was cutting her free from the chair. When he saw the state she was in, he took her in his arms and carried her from the building, certain that they'd both be killed if they were caught.

"Mulder," she groaned, remembering not just that most recent encounter, but every other time he'd saved her on a hunch, every time they'd faced mortal danger together, every day they'd spent debating conspiracies in their basement office. She remembered him, and their lives on the X Files, though the details of how she had behaved after the mystery drug had kicked in were still absent. But she remembered what she had discovered of other victims of its influence, and knew she wasn't out of the woods yet.

"Mulder, don't uncuff me," she ground out as she felt herself losing control. The images in her mind were distorting into twisted, unreal versions of themselves. Soon she would be in a full-on hallucination, helpless to stop herself from whatever it was she had been directed to do.

Mulder clenched the steering wheel tightly, watching in the mirror with helpless eyes as his partner started to slip downhill in the battle against her own mind.

"It's still working," Scully groaned, desperately hoping that he would be able to keep her from hurting anyone until the effects wore off. "Don't-"

That was the last thing rational Scully was able to say before the hallucination took over. Mulder readjusted the rear view mirror and tried to turn his attention back to the road as his partner threw herself against the handcuffs, driven by a mad impulse to wrap her hands around his throat.

It was going to be a long night.


	2. Chapter 2

Two Days Earlier

Clutching a warm paper coffee cup on the chilly fall morning, Dana Scully slowly made her lap of the crime scene, taking in details but not really searching for anything; her partner was already here, and doubtless he would already have profiles and theories two steps ahead of the rest of the investigation. Gingerly stepping around one of the bodies, she came up behind him, bumping lightly against his arm to alert him to her presence.

He turned, smiling. "Morning, Scully. Sorry to get you out of bed so early."

She gave him a rueful 'what else is new?' smile and sipped her coffee, waiting. His eyes were playful as he took in her good-natured skepticism.

"Now, I know what you're going to ask, Scully-"

"How is this an X File?" She finished for him, raising her eyebrows. Now it was Mulder's turn to wait, a smile still playing on his lips as he let her spew logic and reason all over his theories.

Scully surveyed the scene before them, really trying to find whatever was out of the ordinary that Mulder was onto. She came up with nothing.

"Mulder, this is a clear-cut murder/suicide," she said, somewhat exasperated. The young man had fired three bullets into the older before putting the barrel in his own mouth. It wasn't a pretty scene, but it wasn't anything new to her either.

He waited, as he always did, for her to stumble upon the one detail that made the case interesting to him. After a moment, she did.

"What was the relationship between these men?"

"That's just the thing," Mulder said, looking over her shoulder at the two dead men. "According to everyone I've talked to, and everything I've been able to find out about these guys, they had never met or heard of one another before last night."

Scully's eyes narrowed. "Is that all we're going on?" Usually Mulder had more than that.

"No," Mulder said with a wry chuckle. She knew him too well. "There are a couple similarities in this case to one that's been in our filing cabinet for a few years. I'm going to go check a few things out that may back up my theory." He put his hands on Scully's shoulders. "I need you to autopsy our shooter, Raymond Miller. Full tox screens, abnormal brain chemistry, stuff like that. I have a hunch that Mr. Miller may have been acting under some sort of influence when he killed Howard Steffon."

"And himself," Scully sighed. "At least you're giving me something to look for," she grumbled mostly to herself. Mulder gave her shoulders a squeeze then headed for the door.

"Call me if you find anything!" he called back over his shoulder before he disappeared.

Scully made her way over to the body of Raymond Miller, where a crime scene photographer and a local PD officer were standing. "I need Mr. Miller's body sent to the lab at Quantico for an autopsy," she said, and when the officer nodded she turned for the door as well. "I'll be there when he arrives."

XXX

Scully was just peeling off her soiled autopsy gloves when Mulder reappeared, poking his head through the door to check that nobody else was there before coming all the way in and shutting it behind him.

"Hey, Scully," he said as he strode over to her, a stack of files haphazardly clutched under one arm. He seemed to be in good spirits, and she suspected that he'd found exactly what he was hoping to.

Scully tossed her gloves in the medical waste bin before turning to him. "Toxicology should get back to me within the hour," she said, tucking the strand of hair that had been bugging her for the past 45 minutes back into place behind her ear. "As of right now, though, everything about Ray Miller's body seems consistent with the police findings; that he shot Mr. Steffon point-blank, and then himself." She nodded to his stack of files. "I take it you've been more successful in your search?"

"Slightly," He said, and she heard in his voice that something had stumped him. He moved towards an empty exam table, setting his stack down and pulling several papers out for her to see.

"These are files I pulled from our office, all from the past decade. Similar cases, puzzling murder/suicides with no clear-cut motive or connection. A couple of them I had actually looked into for a while, but I hit some dead ends."

Scully flipped through the case folders, seeing nothing atypical of ordinary, non-x files violent crimes. She glanced up when Mulder didn't continue, and saw him gazing contemplatively at a separate sheet of paper. "Mulder?"

He snapped out of it, handing her the paper. "There was a similarity between two cases I reviewed several years ago and the one we joined today. It took me a moment to remember, but I finally tracked it down in this file."

He leaned in over her shoulder, close enough that his breath stirred her hair. His arm came up alongside her, one finger tracing under a word on the file she held.

Pallister Pharmaceutical.

The workplace of one of the deceased in the files. Mulder flipped to another page, where the name cropped up again.

Scully turned to look up at her partner, not unsettled by his proximity when they nearly butted heads. As partners, they were always close, particularly when on an engaging case. Mulder couldn't help but push into her physical space when he was excited about something; his eagerness to share his findings with her was endearing, even if her own notions aligned with his less than half the time.

Distantly aware that maybe he was being a little too hovery, Mulder continued, his eyes locked on hers.

"Pallister Pharmaceutical was the root of my original investigation, but I hit so many roadblocks that I had to give up," he said, remembering his frustration. "The deaths that I was cross-examining were easily written off as murder-suicide and the cases were closed, but I held onto the files."

Scully nodded, playing her part in their usual dialogue. "And now that this company has popped up again, you think they may have had some involvement in all of the deaths."

"That I can't say for certain," Mulder quipped, stepping back and tucking his file away again. "It took some serious digging to connect them to Raymond Miller. But I do know that there's more going on here than meets the eye. It was almost impossible for me to get information from Pallister in my original investigation. There was a definite air of something being swept under the rug."

Before Scully had a chance to tell Mulder that he was probably just being paranoid, a young lab tech opened the door.

"Agent Scully?"

Scully beckoned the young woman forward. "Yes, come in."

"I've got the results on Raymond Miller's tox screen," she said, handing Scully a manila folder. Scully thanked her and she left. As the door clicked closed again, Scully skimmed through the report, quickly picking out the elements in the victim's blood chemistry that Mulder had suspected. He leaned in over her shoulder, not quite sure what he was looking at. Scully turned to her partner, still waiting for him to explain the connection.

"Here," she said, pointing out several compounds indicated on the printout. Her brows furrowed, suddenly not entirely sure what she was seeing either.

Mulder picked up on her puzzlement. "What is it?"

"Well, even if this isn't an X-file, there is definitely something weird going on," she replied, starting to see where Mulder was going to go with this. "See this? At first I thought it was Scopolamine, but the chemical structure is slightly different. I'm going to have to order another chemical analysis, but it looks like it's tacked onto something else- whether to have an altered effect, or to appear as a different substance in the tox screen, I'm not sure. I almost didn't catch it."

"I think that's the point," Mulder remarked, not sounding surprised at her findings. "But I'm willing to bet that this mystery drug was engineered by a certain pharmaceutical company we're familiar with."

Scully frowned. "Not familiar enough, apparently. I think I should try to talk to someone over there. With my medical background, I'll probably get farther than you did."

Mulder nodded, half a grin on his face. "Took the words right out of my mouth, Scully."

"What are you going to do?"

"Before you send that report back to the lab, I'll make a copy of it. I have a feeling the guys might be able to help us analyze it. I'm also going to see if I can talk to Mr. Miller's wife. She might be able to tell me how he came to be taking unsanctioned experimental drugs, and whether or not there are any potential connections to the murder victim that our friends on the force may have missed."

XXX

Scully changed out of her autopsy scrubs and back into her black slacks and blazer while Mulder made a copy of the toxicology report. She met him back on the first floor and they walked together to their cars.

"Call me if you find anything?" Mulder asked from his car door as she moved past him toward hers a few spaces down. She turned back to him as she unlocked the door.

"Always."

Mulder grinned, popping a few sunflower seeds into his mouth as he pulled out. More than usual, he was incredibly glad to have her keen scientific eye on this case. And, though he'd never say it to her face, he could tell she was taking a particular interest in it; maybe even enjoying herself.

His thoughts turned to the tasks ahead, knowing that if he was anywhere close to right about what was going on, they had very little time to work before evidence started disappearing. Still, he decided to visit the Gunmen first, and several minutes later Melvin Frohike was waving him into the cluttered, eccentric space and offering him yesterday's cold coffee.

"I'll pass for the moment, Frohike, I'm wired enough right now as it is."

"You sound like you're onto something," Beyers said with raised eyebrows, typing away at something on the other side of the room.

"Well, that's the hope," Mulder said as he pulled the copied report out of his jacket pocket. "I know none of you studied chemistry or pharmacology, but I thought you might be a little more familiar with any under-the-radar experimental drugs that the guys at the Bureau."

Langly took the paper out of Mulder's hands, leaning back against a desk and pushing his glasses up a bit on his nose. Frohike came around beside him, peering around the taller man's elbow at the report.

"Well, this looks a bit like Scopolamine," Langly said, pointing.

"Yeah, that's what Scully said," Mulder nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. "But there's something weird about it, right?"

"Yeah, there's something weird, alright," Langly agreed.

"What's Scopolamine used for, anyway?"

"Mostly to treat motion sickness," Beyers piped up, pushing away from whatever he was working on to take a look. "Though it is sometimes used by uncivilized men as a date-rape drug. There are also unsubstantiated claims that it can be used as a sort of mind-control, causing victims to become hyper-susceptible to suggestion, with a convenient loss of memory after the fact."

Mulder lit up a bit. It fit the bill pretty perfectly, despite all the other things that were still unexplained. He felt they were making some progress.

"Could what's weird about it be an intentional alteration to the drug, to increase its potency in that latter application?" he asked, gesturing to the paper. "Could it possibly be made powerful enough to force a man to murder someone he'd never met?"

Frohike and Langly exchanged a worried look. "Well, with the recent advancements in medical science, I suppose it might be possible," Frohike said. "But that's a scary thought. Got anything to back your theory up?" He sounded like he hoped the answer was no.

Mulder nodded grimly. "Yeah, I've got a couple of dead guys with links to a suspect pharmaceutical company. In fact, I have to go try to talk to our late shooter's wife now. Give me a call if you come to any conclusions about this mystery drug."

He gave them a mock salute and stepped quickly out the door. The Gunmen shared an eye roll before huddling around the paper Mulder had left them.


	3. Chapter 3

Pallister Pharmaceutical was relatively small as pharmaceutical companies go, mostly catering to the population of northern Virginia. Their headquarters, however, were vast; located far from most metropolitan areas, the company's main offices, laboratories, and storage facilities sprawled over several square miles in a sparsely populated area about a half hour outside of DC.

Trying to go into her end of the investigation with an open mind, Scully couldn't help but think that if the company was engineering illicit drugs, they were in the perfect place to do so without drawing attention.

She flashed her badge as a security officer at the parking gate inquired about her business. Puzzled, if not flustered, he gave her a pass for her car marked 'Visitor'.

After parking her requisitioned car, Scully found her way into the clean, white atrium of the company's office complex. Simple, printed-plexiglass signs on the walls offered guidance to other wings of the building. In the center of the atrium was a small, modern desk.

"Can I help you?" the woman at the desk asked pleasantly, looking up from her paperwork. She was middle aged, with short dark hair. At the crown of her head, slightly graying roots were just starting to appear.

Scully stepped forward, once again showing her badge. "Yes, I'm Special Agent Dana Scully," she said, tucking her badge back away after the woman had glanced at it. "I'm investigating the death of a man I believe was a customer here. Is there someone I can speak to about obtaining records of his prescribed medications?"

The receptionist blinked, then gestured to a hall behind her on the right. "Well, you could start by talking to Dr. Brontman," she said, reaching for the phone. "His offices are just down the hall, but I'll call him out to speak with you."

Scully held up a hand, already walking. "No, that's alright," she said. "I'll find him. Thank you."

The second to last door in the hall was ajar, but Scully could see the plastic plate reading "R. Brontman". She pushed the door further open with a light knock, and the man inside looked up at the sound. He closed the binder he was holding and turned to walk towards her.

"Dr. Brontman?"

He smiled, offering his hand. "Richard Brontman," he said as she took his hand and shook it. "Who do I have the pleasure of addressing today?"

"Um, my name is Dana Scully," she said, suddenly a bit flustered. Dr. Brontman was much younger than she expected, and the piercing blue eyes that appraised her seemed to disregard professional formality. She managed to hold his gaze, but it made her incredibly uncomfortable. Fortunately, he saved her the trouble of having to continue.

"What can I do for you today, Ms. Scully?"

"Well, I'm not here for personal reasons, Dr. Brontman," Scully said, getting her composure back. "I'm actually a medical doctor myself. I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I need to ask you some questions about a man you may have prescribed medications to."

Dr. Brontman's smile faded a bit, and his inquisitive eyes narrowed slightly. But before a fraction of a second had passed, his expression morphed into one of concern. He gestured to his desk, taking the chair behind it and motioning for Scully the sit opposite.

"Of course I'll do my best to answer your questions, Agent Scully," he said, much more formal now. "But you must understand that there are confidentiality clauses, and certain information about our patients and customers simply cannot be divulged without their express consent."

"I understand, doctor," Scully said, taking the seat across from him. "But those clauses only apply while the patient is alive." She studied his face, waiting to see his reaction.

Brontman cleared his throat. "I see...what is the name of the deceased?"

"Raymond Miller. He died late last night."

Nodding silently, the doctor turned to his computer and entered the database, typing in Ray Miller's name. After a moment, he frowned. "Nobody under that name in our database," he said with a shrug.

Scully's brow furrowed. "Are you sure?"

Brontman typed away for a few more moments, then shook his head.

"Try Howard Steffon."

The keyboard clicked some more. "Nope." Scully sighed. So much for the easy way.

"Dr. Brontman, are you aware of Pallister Pharmaceutical currently working on any ground-breaking experimental drugs or medication?" Rather than listen for a response, she watched his face carefully for a reaction.

Brontman scoffed. "Well, of course we are constantly looking for ways to improve on modern medicine. Our scientists experiment every day. But if you're insinuating that any unapproved experimental drugs made their way out into the general public and caused a guy to kill himself, I assure you that access to our laboratories is strictly regulated."

Scully nodded, choosing not to acknowledge his defensive retort. She also noted that although she herself hadn't mentioned it, the doctor had known Miller's cause of death to be suicide. "Dr. Brontman, I'd like to take a look around your laboratories myself. As a medical doctor, I'm more than familiar with standard procedures in a lab setting, so I don't see any reason why I wouldn't be able to access the lab for a short while today, do you?"

The doctor just stared for a moment. Then, with a slight shake of his head, he forced a smile onto his face.

"Of course not, Agent Scully. I can take you there myself."

XXX

A stern-looking woman with wiry white hair answered the door, her expression one of mingled suspicion and annoyance as she took in Mulder with his dark trench coat over his usual suit and tie, badge in hand. He met her eyes apologetically before getting down to business.

"I'm sorry to bother you in this difficult time," he said sincerely to the woman he assumed was Ray Miller's mother-in-law. "Are you Mrs. Knowlton?"

She nodded wearily.

"Mrs. Knowlton, I'm Agent Mulder with the FBI- I'm investigating the circumstances of your son-in-law's death. I need to speak with Vanessa."

The old woman's eyes narrowed, and she looked like could start a fierce argument with him. Before she had a chance, however, a puffy-eyed young woman appeared in the doorway behind her.

"It's ok, Mom," Vanessa Miller said, her voice thick. "Come in, Agent Mulder."

With a small nod of thanks, he followed her into the living room. She disappeared for a moment, and Mulder looked around the room, always made awkward by the intrusion of questioning spouses of the recently deceased. After just a minute, Vanessa was back, gesturing to the armchair as she set two coffees down on the table. She took the couch, facing him and sipping her coffee. She gestured to the mug in front of Mulder. "Please, have some coffee. I assumed you'd need some. I know I would, doing your job."

Mulder took the mug gratefully. After the obligatory first sip, he looked up at her.

"Vanessa, I'm sure you know that I'm here regarding your husband's death." There was no subtle way to broach the subject. "Unfortunately, much is still unclear about what happened between Raymond and Mr. Steffon last night, or why."

Vanessa sniffled, trying not to get upset. "I already told the police, Ray never knew that guy. At least not that I know. I guess there were other things that I didn't know though, if he was unhappy enough to….." she trailed off, covering her face with her hands. Mrs. Knowlton appeared again, sitting on the couch next to her daughter and rubbing her back comfortingly. Vanessa swallowed a sob, wiping under her eyes.

When she'd recovered, Mulder pressed on. "Did your husband have anything to do with a company called Pallister Pharmaceutical?"

The young widow shook her head. "No…..well, sort of. I have a prescription through them for anti-anxiety medication. Sometimes Ray would stop by to get the refills for me."

"He'd stop by their main complex, the one over near Luray?" Mulder asked, a theory forming. Vanessa nodded. He looked her in the eye, trying to convey the importance of his next question.

"Was he there getting your medication yesterday, Vanessa? Or earlier this week?"

She frowned, realizing he was trying to connect dots, but confused about what they might be. "Yeah, he went yesterday morning," she said. "But I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"It might be nothing," Mulder said, not wanting to give her more grief before he had more proof. "I'll be in touch when I find out more. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Miller."

He stood and showed himself out.

XXX

The line rang once before she picked up.

"Scully."

"Scully, it's me. Where are you?"

"I'm on my way back to DC. Mulder, my visit to Pallister turned up absolutely nothing. I'm starting to think that we're taking the wrong angle on this."

"Not so fast, skeptic," Mulder quipped. "Where you have been unsuccessful, I've had a bit more luck. I don't want to tell you over the phone, though. How long till you're back at the office?"

Scully sighed. "Twenty minutes?"

"Ok, I'll meet you there."

Twenty-three minutes later, Scully walked up the front steps of the Hoover building. Mulder had been waiting on the landing and fell into step beside her. When he saw the exhausted look on her face, he pulled a white paper bag from behind his back, waggling his eyebrows at her. Scully saw the grease marks seeping through the paper and gave a grateful sigh. She hadn't eaten all day.

"I don't even care what's in there, it's going to be gone before I reach the desk," she said, only half joking.

Mulder chuckled. "You should really watch what you say, Scully. I'm sure I've turned up with some pretty weird things in paper bags over our years together."

She gave him a tired eye roll as she pushed the elevator button and waited for the doors to open.

They both went straight for the desk, Scully sinking with a graceless flop into one of the chairs. Mulder extracted a box of vegetable fried rice and set it in front of her. For himself, he grabbed a couple spring rolls.

"You eat, I'll talk," He said, leaning back in the chair opposite her. Scully nodded, squeezing a soy sauce packet onto her food. Mulder waited till she had stuffed a heaping bite into her mouth before he started, knowing that she wouldn't pay any attention till there was food in her stomach.

"I talked to Mrs. Miller," He started, taking a bite of spring roll. "She's been taking Pallister - prescribed anti anxiety meds for about a year. Raymond was there filling her prescription yesterday morning."

Scully looked up from her food with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah," Mulder said, agreeing with her unspoken intrigue. "It gets better. I had the Gunmen analyze that tox screen I copied; their original remarks were the same as yours, but they got farther. They think that the drug was specifically engineered, a splice of several other formulas, in order to give it a very specific effect. A very illegal effect, might I add."

"The kind of effect that might cause an average Joe like Ray Miller to shoot a guy he'd never met?" Scully asked between chews.

"Exactly. Langly said that someone given the altered drug would have about a 24-hour period of intense susceptibility to suggestion, accompanied by severe hallucinations or delusions, which would likely prompt the victim to act on any such suggestion. Additionally, temporary amnesia would prevent them from recognizing that they'd been drugged and weren't acting under their own power. At least, not until after the fact when it may be too late."

Scully raised her eyebrows. " _Langly_ was able to get all this from that tox report?"

Mulder chuckled. "Lets just say his younger years were a bit of a study in, uh….chemistry and medicine."

Scully saw where he was going with this. "So you're saying that someone at Pallister administered the drug to Miller yesterday morning, directing him to murder Howard Steffon. Temporary amnesia caused him to forget the encounter, going about his day until hallucinations kicked in and drove him to find Steffon and kill him."

"More or less, yeah."

"So, why did he kill himself? Simple guilt, once he realized what he'd done? I don't believe that 'heightened susceptibility to suggestion' could make a man kill himself."

Mulder looked at her thoughtfully. "No, I think it could. Langly said this stuff would be incredibly potent. I'm sure the FBI lab has come to the same conclusion. Besides, it would be the perfect cover up. Otherwise there's a chance that someone could figure out Miller was manipulated."

Scully frowned, trying to keep from outright dismissing the notion. _Open mind, Dana._ "Ok, but why Howard Steffon? Why would Pallister want him dead?"

Mulder grinned. "That's the real jackpot, Scully. I was going through Mr. Steffon's records and found several big-figure transactions into another account. Took some digging, but the name on the account was an alias used by one of the chief development scientists at Pallister."

"He was funding something under the table?"

"Yep. My guess is he had second thoughts about what he was putting his money into."

"And they had him killed to avoid exposure." She had to admit, it made sense.

Mulder nodded and for a moment they didn't speak. Both agents had reached the same thought.

Scully voiced it first. "The theory is sound, Mulder, but it will never hold up in court without hard evidence. We need proof that this drug exists, that it could work the way you say, and that it was given to Ray Miller maliciously by someone working at Pallister."

She sighed, setting her half-eaten takeout on the table. "We have to go back there."

Mulder gave her an apologetic look. "No, Scully, I'm afraid you have to go back there. I'm going to talk with the scientist Steffon was dealing with. Apparently, he's no longer employed at Pallister. I'm afraid his life might be in danger now."

Scully looked at him unhappily. She'd already (in her opinion) looked a bit of a fool asking questions at Pallister once. Besides, she hated splitting up again at this point in the investigation. They didn't know how deep the conspiracy might run, but there was an undeniable risk in either of them poking around without backup. Unfortunately, though, the X files only had two agents.

After a moment she met his eyes and nodded. "I'll go, but I don't know if I'll find anything. There were personnel everywhere when Brontman took me down to their lab."

Mulder gave her a small appreciative smile, then stood. "Just do what you can, Scully, I'll try to meet you there after I'm done."

He put a hand on her shoulder as he walked past, giving it a light squeeze. Scully poked at her food for a second before calling after him. "Be careful, Mulder."

He stopped in the doorway, turning to respond, but her back was still to him. She knew he'd heard.


	4. Chapter 4

An hour after Mulder had left her in their office, Scully was back outside the Pallister Pharmaceutical headquarters, this time arguing with the security guard who insisted on denying her entrance to the parking lot on account of the fact that normal business hours had ended. Flashing her badge had no effect; he told her flatly to come back tomorrow unless she had a warrant.

"Even if you had a warrant tonight," he said warily when she threatened to get one, "I can't let you in there. For sterilization reasons we have chemical cleaning crews sweep every hall at night. Not safe for anyone who isn't properly suited up."

 _Bullshit_ , Scully thought. He even had the nerve to look proud of himself for coming up with that one. However, she knew she couldn't win with him, and backed off, thanking him for his time and promising to return in the morning.

Getting well out of visual range before turning, she chose a narrow paved road that ran parallel with the west edge of the complex. After a few hundred yards she found a suitable spot and pulled off. She got out, noting that the car was mostly obscured by tall grasses and wasn't likely to be spotted by anyone tonight.

As Scully crossed the road, she took note of a large oak tree about ten yards away; it was starting to get dark and she wanted to make sure she could find her way back to the car.

Fortunately, away from the main complex, the fences weren't particularly high, and she was able to scale the chain link barrier with relative ease. Dropping down on the other side, Scully scanned for surveillance cameras or alarm components. She saw nothing, but stuck to the shadows nonetheless. She could see the main office building glowing off to her left, and decided to leave that one for last, as it was most likely to still have people in it.

The building in front of her was low and boxy, but with wide windows into the hallway. She crept up to a tall bush by one of the windows and peered in; it didn't look familiar, but from a couple door labels she saw, it had to be a section of the laboratory building.

The two buildings to her right were plain and windowless, most likely warehouses. She decided to start there. As she came to the door of the first warehouse, a floodlight switched on above, blinding her and sending out an ambient buzzing noise.

Scully froze, her hand on her gun, before realizing it was just a motion sensor. After a moment she let out the breath she was holding and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.

Inside the warehouse, dim partial lighting guided Scully through rows of boxes, most containing old paperwork. Some shelves held old lab equipment; others, standard office supplies. Encountering nobody in the quiet expanse, Scully searched thoroughly for any evidence to their theories. After a half hour, she gave up.

Ducking out of the door back into the darkened yard, Scully almost turned for the lab, assuming that the second warehouse contained much of the same. But then, she wondered. Trying the door, she found it locked. After a quick glance to make sure no one was near, she pulled out her picks and started working the keyhole. After a moment, she was rewarded with a tiny click, and she pushed the door open.

Instead of a wide open storage space, Scully found herself in a narrow hallway. On either side were open doorways every twenty feet or so that opened into small storage areas, but what Scully was interested in was the closed door at the end marked RESTRICTED ACCESS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She pulled out her picks again and made quick work of it.

Inside was a gleamingly sterile lab, nowhere near the size of the on-the-record one she'd been shown earlier, but still large.

Her eyes immediately went to the corners, and sure enough, several security cameras looked over the laboratory floor. Still, she knew she'd hit the jackpot and didn't really see another choice.

She ducked through the rows of work stations, trying to stay low. At each table, Scully rifled through the drawers, looking for charts or reports that held the evidence she needed.

At just the second desk, she found a chart containing what appeared to be chemical structures for twenty variations of the same base drug. Behind it were probably fifty more charts of the same nature. Scully pocketed one, then crawled to the next desk. The first paper she encountered sent a shock through her as her mind registered Raymond Miller's name. There was no photo; it seemed at first to be a standard patient chart, as are filled out by doctors or medical technicians. His blood type, weight, allergies; all kinds of medical information were recorded. But at the bottom, one line was very out of place.

DOSAGE: 45 mg DIRECTIVE: accomplished STATUS: deceased

Several reports for other names that Scully didn't recognize were stored behind Raymond's, many of them reporting similar statistics, however on many the 'directive' was not accomplished. Not sure what this meant, she moved on. Getting a sample of the drug would be the most concrete evidence, and she wanted to find it fast so she could get out and report back to Mulder with her findings.

Deciding to risk the odds that someone was still watching the cameras, she stood to reach for some vials on a high shelf. They were labeled in ways that Scully didn't recognize, and each contained about 50 milliliters of some viscous clear substance. She pulled one down and slipped it into her pocket. Whatever it was, it would have to do.

Keeping her head down, as if she wouldn't be easily identified by her hair, Scully strode quickly for the door. She pulled it open and came face to face with three men in lab coats. One of them was Dr. Brontman.

Scully took a startled step back, glancing between the three men. She tried to regain her composure but her guilt was already so apparent that it barely mattered.

"Agent Scully?" Brontman sputtered, matching her step back with one towards her.

"Dr. Brontman," she said, trying keep her voice light. "I was hoping to talk to you again. I realize this is probably a bad time." She flashed a hopefully charming 'oops' smile.

"Bad time and bad place, Agent Scully," Brontman said warily. "This area is for authorized staff only. You're going to have to leave. I'm indisposed at the moment, but you're more than welcome to come back tomorrow so we can talk."

Scully nodded, letting herself look flustered. "Of course, Doctor. I must have gotten lost. I'll go now."

She went to move past the three men, who eyed her coldly. At the doorway, a fourth appeared behind them. He was middle aged with graying hair and a stern face. He pushed through the other two men, coming to stand next to Brontman and effectively blocking her path.

"Agent Scully," he said with a sly familiarity. "I'd love to let you leave us, but I believe you hold some information that is worth quite a lot to this company."

He pulled his right hand from his jacket and though Scully's hand was already inching towards her gun, it was too late. He put the pistol to her head.

"Hands above your head, please, Agent. I'd hate to have to kill you now."

Scully lifted her hands slowly, her eyes now locked on the man in front of her, trying not to focus on the gun barrel inches from her nose.

At his order, Dr. Brontman turned out Scully's pockets, retrieving the stolen paperwork and vial. He then unholstered her gun.

Scully turned slightly, trying to catch Brontman's eye.

"Listen, Dr. Brontman," she said. "I'm a federal agent. My partner knows I'm here. He knows what you're doing here, and we're going to get that evidence eventually."

Brontman said nothing, but the man with the gun laughed. "No you won't," he said with a knowing smile. "Your partner won't either. You dug too deep here when you should have left it alone."

Scully's heart was beating anxiously in her chest. This was starting to sound bad for her. Suddenly she wished she hadn't hid the car so well.

"You took everything I came for," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. The barrel of the gun still glared at her on eye level. "Let me go."

"Can't do that," the man sighed. "It's like you said; you'd get the evidence eventually." He nodded to the two other men. "We'll need to restrain miss Scully."

Scully struggled as the men each took one of her arms, trying not to let her growing panic show. Suddenly, a shrill noise cut through the room and they all froze. Twisting her arms against their grips, Scully stared down the man with the gun. The noise rang out again. One of the men reached into Scully's jacket pocket and pulled out her phone. He set it on the table and it continued to ring.

"That's my partner calling," she said, panting. "When I don't answer, he'll come looking for me."

The man with the gun smiled again. "Oh, Agent Scully, I'm counting on that."


	5. Chapter 5

Thank you everyone for all the wonderful feedback! I'm glad so many people are enjoying this little adventure with me as my brain makes it up. I should warn you, though, that this story is ending up a lot longer and more elaborate than I originally intended, so y'all might be in for a long ride. I'll try to keep new chapters coming every couple days, so hang in there, and keep reading/reviewing!

Here's chapter 5, enjoy!

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Mulder shuffled impatiently by his car as the line rang twice, three times, four times.

"Come on, Scully, pick up the phone," he groaned to the unresponsive line.

He had just left the scientist- a skinny, nervous man named Herman Billings- with local PD in protective custody. The fact that his life was in danger had not come as a surprise; he'd tried to run when Mulder came to his door. Mulder had been anticipating this and intercepted Billings at the back door, tackling him before taking him back inside and demanding answers. The things he said had confirmed most of Mulder's suspicions.

Now he was trying to reach his partner, to catch her up and check on her progress. He also wanted to warn her to be careful; Billings had made it clear that security was no joke on the secret complex, and they would use violent force on any trespasser.

As the line continued to ring, Mulder felt a nagging sense of unease growing in his stomach. After a moment, it went to her voicemail.

"Damn it," he said under his breath as her voice played at him on the recorded message. When it finished, he decided to leave a message. "Scully, it's me. I've just finished up with Mr. Billings and I'm headed over to Pallister now. Hopefully I'll meet you there, but if you get this first give me a call. And be careful. These people will go pretty far to protect their secrets."

Mulder hung up the phone and got in his car, hurrying toward Pallister Pharmaceutical.

XXX

The two men who had not yet spoken to Scully took her by the arms and forced her down into a plain metal chair that stood behind one of the desks. The man who seemed to be in charge held the gun at her head as one of them pulled several plastic zip ties from a drawer and used them to secure her wrists to the chair arms, her ankles to the cold steel legs. Dr. Brontman stood to the side, looking uncomfortable and avoiding her eyes.

When they were sure Scully was tightly bound to the chair, both men were instructed to leave and send for another scientist, a Dr. Sorensen. When they were gone, Scully looked back up at her nameless captor.

"So it's true," she seethed, her hands clenching into fists as she tested the ties. The plastic bit into her wrists, but nothing budged. The man looked down at her, feigning puzzlement.

"What's true?"

"Everything Mulder and I suspected. The fact alone that you're keeping me here against my will is a testament to how illegal this whole operation is." Scully's eyes darted around the room, looking for any means of escape, or of attracting someone's attention. Mulder would no doubt be on his way to meet her, if not outright searching for her. She thought of what the man had said about wanting Mulder to come for her and shivered slightly. If he came barging in unprepared, they would both be killed.

She shook off the thought and focused on engaging the man in front of her. "Who are you?" she asked, searching his face for answers. "And what are you trying to accomplish with all of this?"

"Me?" the man chuckled. "I am but a player in the game, as you are now a pawn in it. Since you won't live to divulge it, however, I see no harm in sharing my name."

Scully stiffened, her breath catching in her throat.

"Daryl Hunt," the man continued, pretending not to notice her fear. "I am a practiced scientist in pharmacology, chemistry, and psychology. I am one of the people in charge of the operation your partner so discourteously got you tangled up in investigating. As I'm sure you discovered, or were about to, we've made great progress."

Scully ground her teeth, unable to keep her cool when confronted with such bastardization of the esteemed practice of medicine. "You killed an innocent man, or near enough," she said venomously. "You killed a colleague. Why? What about this work is so important to you?"

Daryl Hunt looked at the floor for a moment, apparently thinking. When he looked up, there was no remorse in his eyes. "Why? To test the product's efficiency," he said simply. "To protect our interests from exposure. The success we have come so close to will be invaluable. Powerful men from all over the world will come secretly to know of these possibilities they've only ever dreamed of. The potential for orchestrating one's own ambitions behind an unwitting puppet is, to say the least, alluring. Wouldn't you agree?"

Scully's answering stare was unwaveringly icy. "Actually, Dr. Hunt, I'm a firm believer in free will and hard work."

Hunt laughed again. "I admire your tenacity," he said, turning to walk to one of the tables behind them. "But alas, we are out of time to chat, and free will is something you do not have right now, Agent Scully. And I'm afraid that in order for it to continue undiscovered, you must become a part of my work now."

Scully twisted around, trying to keep him in sight. Her heart was pounding fiercely in her ears, her fight or flight response activated, screaming for her to get away, or lash out at the threat. But she could do neither. She only twisted her hands helplessly, pulling against the chair and the bonds that held her to it.

Across the room, the door clicked open again and Scully's heart skipped a beat. _Mulder!_ She almost yelled his name, but when she turned, her heart plummeted into her stomach. The man walking towards her was no friend; from the pocket of his lab coat he took a small vial, identical to the one she'd tried to steal.

He handed it to Dr. Hunt, who had come back around in front of Scully. She started to shake when she saw that he was holding a syringe.

"What is that?" she demanded, jerking against the ties once more. Hunt inserted his syringe into the vial and drew the entire contents into its chamber. Scully groaned with exertion as she struggled. "You stay away from me with that," she panted, her eyes not leaving the needle. "I am a federal agent. You touch me and you'll spend the rest of your life in prison, Hunt!"

Hunt ignored her, holding the syringe up to the light, admiring it. "You asked what it was," he said softly after a moment. "It's our newest formula. As of yet, untested. You'll have the honor of being our first subject, miss Scully."

He turned to the men on either side of him. "Hold her still," he said firmly. "I don't want to lose a single drop this time."

The man who'd brought the vial moved behind Scully, pushing down heavily on her shoulders. Brontman moved hesitantly to her side, gripping the arm of the chair to keep her from tipping it, which she otherwise would have succeeded at doing. To what end, she did not know; Scully's mind was rapidly being overcome by panic.

Dr. Hunt flicked the syringe, forcing the tiny air bubble to escape out the needle. Then he tore the sleeve of her jacket up to the elbow, exposing the delicate bluish vein that ran just beneath the surface of her porcelain skin, carrying the frantic, adrenaline - saturated life blood through her trembling body.

"You can't do this!" Scully yelled, half pleading. "I won't do it! Whatever you want from me, I won't do it!" Her voice choked off in a sob as the needle punctured her skin, an otherwise normal procedure feeling invasive, violating. Cold, strange liquid coursed through her body. She barely felt the pain but she sobbed anyway, collapsing slowly forward as Hunt withdrew the now - empty syringe and stepped back. She knew even before he spoke the words what it was that they wanted. What she would soon be powerless to prevent.


	6. Chapter 6

XXX

The steady red needle inched slowly forward, mercilessly reminding Mulder that despite his efforts, his fears might already be realized.

He'd spent the first twenty minutes of his drive arguing internally with himself, alternately scolding himself for being paranoid and protective when he knew how Scully hated it, telling his conscience that she was fine; then feeling terribly certain that she was in danger, pushing the cold sinking feeling deeper down into his gut and cursing himself for making her go back into hostile territory alone.

Now he pushed the gas pedal a little harder, eyeing the needle on the speedometer as it crept well past the point of unreasonable speeding and into the realm of "fugitive car chase".

Finally, he saw the lights of PPC buildings radiating across the darkened countryside. Out here there were few houses, and the complex stuck out sorely. A he approached, Mulder put his mind where Scully's would have been several hours ago. It had already been getting dark then, and chances are she had to break in this time. Dimming his headlights, Mulder turned down a narrow road that bordered the fence surrounding the complex. After driving for a few minutes, his lights glinted off a reflector peeking through the weeds. She'd done a good job of hiding it, but Mulder recognized the Bureau car instantly.

He pulled in next to it and got out, checking quickly for any sign of his partner. When there was none, he turned back towards the fence. Several buildings stood about a hundred yards on the other side, and it was certainly short enough to climb, so he did, following his instincts.

He jogged cautiously past the lab building, knowing there could still be people inside to see him through the windows. He didn't bother breaking in there; if Scully had found something, and was herself discovered, she'd be in one of the warehouses. He just knew.

The first one was unlocked, so he only glanced inside. Mad scientists didn't leave their secrets out in the open for anyone to find. Scully wasn't there. The second warehouse was locked, as he suspected. He silently picked the lock and slipped inside.

XXX

The murmured voices of the three men were hard to make out, but Scully fought to stay conscious, trying desperately to hear what they were saying, to find a way to escape the tightening fingers of the drug on her weakened mind.

Her head lolled forward as she lost her strength and motor control. There was no pain anymore, just fog. The words she'd been forced to hear rang in her head, over and over, even as she tried to block them out.

In the conscious world, a world that Scully was rapidly losing her hold on, one of the men spoke sharply enough to cut through the haze.

"He's on the grounds. We've got to go, now!"

Scully tried to lift her head. _He? Who else is here? Where are they going?_

For a moment, his name almost came to her lips, but then it slipped away as the fog swirled closer. Her head dropped again. She was so sleepy.

She'd figure it out when she woke up….after she did the thing she was supposed to do.

XXX

Instantly, Mulder knew he had found something. The inside of the warehouse was not a warehouse, but a short series of offices and storage rooms leading to a glaringly restricted area. Mulder ducked into a few of the rooms, trying to see if there was another way in, or at least a window so he could tell what he would be walking into. Predictably, there was nothing, and he couldn't afford to wait any longer. He loosened his gun in its holster and crouched by the door, taking an extra minute to maneuver the locking mechanisms quietly. When he heard the soft click that would grant him access, he pocketed the pick kit and stood, drawing his gun.

Mulder kicked the door open, stepping in quickly and doing a side to side sweep, leading with his firearm. The room was some sort of lab, and its lone occupant was slumped unconscious on a chair in the center, auburn hair obscuring her face. Mulder lowered his gun and ran to her, his heart beating rapidly against his rib cage.

"Scully!"

She didn't stir at his call, or when he dropped to his knees in front of her, one hand going to her face. For a moment he was crushed by the terrifying certainty that he had been too late, but his hands moved over her cheeks and to her neck anyway, feeling for the telltale beat of her life. Before he could find it, she gave a choked whimper, rolling her head back away from his touch. Mulder couldn't even sigh in relief. Whoever had done this to Scully, whatever they had done, couldn't be far away. He had to get them out.

"Scully, it's me," he said as loudly as he dared. Her eyes did not open, but she groaned and let her head fall forward again. A thin trickle of spittle ran from her lips down her chin. Bewildered and terrified, he checked her for injury, finding nothing. His eyes found the torn sleeve of her jacket and the tiny puncture in the crook of her arm.

"Oh, God, Scully," he breathed, his mind racing. "I've got to get you out of here right now." His gaze fell on the zip ties that circled her wrists and he pulled out his small knife, quickly but carefully sliding it between her soft skin and the thin plastic fetters. When he'd freed her hands, they fell limply off the sides of the chair and he moved to her ankles.

He holstered his gun, feeling terribly naked without it in hand, before pulling her into his arms. Scully wasn't heavy as people go, but she definitely needed both of his arms. He slung one of hers around his shoulder to help keep her up, then went for the door.

They were able to escape the warehouse with no incident, but Mulder knew there was no way he could get his partner back over the fence they'd both climbed to get in. He followed the fence around until he came to the parking gate. It was closed, but the bars only rose a few feet above the ground. With a little difficulty, he got them both over and back to his car.

"Hang in there, Scully," he said as he laid her in the backseat of the car. Quickly he went around to the driver's side, certain that someone would be following them at any moment. No obvious security appeared, but Mulder still gunned it out of there.

Once they were several miles away and he could be sure they didn't have a tail, Mulder turned to check on Scully. She was still unconscious, but stirring fitfully. After a moment, she began to mumble. He could only pick out a few words, but she sounded terrified.

"...no….can't.." Scully pleaded. Mulder reached back and slipped his hand into hers, squeezing it tightly. In her delirium, she clutched back desperately. "...Mulder, don't…don't…"

Keeping his eyes on the road, Mulder rubbed tiny circles into the back of her hand, trying to soothe her. "Shhh, Scully." He murmured. "You're ok now. We'll be home soon."

After a moment, her noises ceased as she slipped deeper into unconsciousness.

Mulder let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and extracted his hand from Scully's.

It was only then that he realized he had no idea what to do next.

Scully had been captured; obviously having discovered the truth in that warehouse. She'd been drugged, but with what? He didn't dare take her to a hospital until he himself had a better idea of what her condition was. He couldn't risk that Pallister had its fingers in other medical establishments in the area. It would be all too easy to flag Scully's admittance to a hospital and send someone in disguised as medical personnel to quietly finish off the job.

As he thought it over, the fear he'd felt when he first saw that puncture wound bubbled back to the surface. He feared that if he had a way to test her blood right now, he's find traces of the same substance that had been in Raymond Miller's bloodstream; that she'd been injected with the very drug they were investigating, which could possibly turn her to do horrible things against her will.

Why else would they capture her and tie her up, only to let her live and be rescued? Kidnapping a federal agent was a serious crime, which could easily be charged on them by Scully and unravel their entire operation. The only way it made sense was if they planned to ensure that she'd never be able to testify.

He couldn't take her home; if they'd actually intended to kill her tonight and he'd been so lucky as to rescue her in time, they'd no doubt try to find her and silence her for good. His place was not likely to be much safer, but he didn't have a third option. It would have to be there.

He spent the rest of the drive back to his apartment thinking through what he could possibly do for his partner, medically. Not taking her to the hospital when he knew she'd been forcefully given an unknown drug was incredibly risky, even when he knew that to take her into a public space was far riskier.

 _Dammit_ , he thought. _I should have been the one poking around over there. If it was me drugged, Scully would know exactly what to do._

He tried to put himself in her frame of mind; despite their disagreement over certain aspects of their investigations over the years, he did listen to what she said. Especially when it came to medicine, which he knew little about. Hearing Scully go on about illnesses and treatments was mesmerizing to Mulder.

If it were him, he knew she'd start by trying to get him hydrated. The more water in the bloodstream, the faster you'd get the drug out.

Then she'd….what? Check him for fever? That seemed reasonable. Watch his heart rate? Even though he knew hospitals would be dangerous, if Scully's pulse started to dip or spike, he'd have no choice but to admit her. He'd stay awake by her bed all night with his hand on his gun, but he wouldn't risk killing her himself by not knowing how to care for her.

His thoughts were interrupted by the jarring realization that he was already parked in front of his apartment. How long he'd been there, he had no idea. Shaking out of his thoughts, he opened the door. Whatever had happened, he needed to take care of Scully now. He'd gotten her involved in this, and he'd be damned if he let any harm come to her from it.

He moved around to the rear door and opened it, bending to pull his still - unconscious partner out of the backseat and gently into his arms. Nudging the door closed with his foot, he made for the front door of his building. It was quite late now, and no one was around. Slowly, he maneuvered Scully's limp form around so he could reach his keys and unlock the door.

Once he'd gotten them in, up the elevator, and through his door, he locked it behind them. Dropping his keys with a sigh, he quickly went to the couch, carefully laying the petite form down in what he hoped was a comfortable position. Since her fit in the car, Scully hadn't stirred. He knew she'd probably stay out for a bit longer and left her there to get some water and a warm washcloth.

X

X

Sorry for the weird ending- this and the next chapter were originally just one, but when I uploaded it it was sooo long, so I cut it in half. That being said, the next chapter will be up very soon.

PS - at least it wasn't another cliffhanger, eh? :P


	7. Chapter 7

Dear Reader, beware: Ahead lies paranoia, violence, suspense, and angst for you and our beloved agents.

X

To jean d'arc: I'm afraid we're not yet back at chapter one; though originally it would have been around here, I decided to drag some stuff out. We'll get there soon though!

To The Mad Traveler and DrizzlyNovemberInMySoul, thanks for being my most loyal reviewers! I'm afraid you're going to hate me for the next few chapters though, because I think they will all end in cliffhangers.

Thanks for ll the love, guys - read, review, and enjoy!

X

XXX

Having settled Scully, still unconscious, onto the couch, Mulder went for the bathroom, hoping that his pitiful attempt to play doctor for her would be enough.

As he held a small cloth under the warm stream of water and wrung it out, Mulder tried not to think about what would happen when his partner did wake. His primary concern was making sure that her life was in no immediate danger; after that, he had no idea. Hopefully Scully would be at least semi-coherent and able to tell him what had happened.

Mulder flicked the bathroom light off and returned to Scully's side with the warm cloth and a glass of water. He sat on the edge of the couch by her hips, reaching down to brush back her hair and wipe the warm cloth across her brow.

A few minutes of this passed, and Mulder began to worry that she wasn't going to wake. Finally, Scully began to stir, her head turning fitfully from side to side. When she'd regained enough awareness to feel the warm touch on her forehead, she gasped, jerking upright as her eyes flew open.

"Easy, Scully," Mulder said quickly, urging her back down onto the couch. "It's just me."

Her eyes were wild for a moment and she clutched his arm painfully tight, not letting him push her back down. Mulder let up, not wanting to alarm her, and moved his hand to hers instead, holding it gently. After a moment, he saw the recognition in her eyes and she let out a deep breath, her senses returning. She sank back to the couch, closing her eyes again for a moment.

Mulder let go of his partner's hand, reaching for the glass of water. When she opened her eyes again, he held it out to her, helping her into a semi-sitting position to drink.

She took a small sip, then tried to push the glass back into his hands.

"Scully, drink," Mulder said firmly. "I have no idea what you've been through but you look like hell. The least we can do is get your fluid levels up."

Scully groaned and took another sip, after which she fell back to the couch, dizzy and exhausted.

She recognized that they were in Mulder's apartment and tried to piece together how she'd gotten there. She remembered him carrying her; that much was real. But the rest of her memories of the night were not her true memories.

"They were going to kill me," she said weakly.

Mulder set the glass down, then turned back to her, confused and concerned.

"You remember what happened?"

Scully looked up at him, but her eyes were distant, unfocused. "Parts," she muttered, shaking her head. "I remember breaking in…..being caught. They...sedated me with something. It had to have been a temporary dosage, because I came to while they were talking about what to do with me. They'd tied me to something."

Scully's face crumpled and she shut her eyes against the memory as she lived it.

Mulder took her hand in his once more, giving it an encouraging squeeze.

"One of the scientists had a gun," Scully breathed. She clenched her fingers tighter around his. "He kept putting it against my head and asking me what I knew. I told them...I told them that we knew everything, and we were going to expose them. The man with the gun told me that he had to kill me, because without the hard evidence or my testimony, you'd never have a case. But he had to make it look like an accident. That was the last I saw of them, then I went under again. Mulder, I don't know if they planned to burn the building down with me in it, or what….but if you hadn't shown up…" she trailed off, curling her body a little closer against his. He offered her his arms, pulling her up into his lap and rubbing comforting circles into her back as she took deep, shaky breaths.

"It's okay," he said quietly, pulling her head into the nook between his neck and his shoulder, a place it had seemed to be finding on its own anyway.

"I was so afraid," he said after a moment, holding her a little tighter. "Scully, I thought for sure that they'd done to you what they did to Ray Miller. I wasn't sure what would happen when you woke up."

He pushed back, looking into her eyes.

"We're not out of the woods yet, Scully. Even without the hard evidence, we've got enough to get them now. When they realize you escaped, they may send someone around to follow up on that accident you were supposed to have. That's why I didn't take you home."

Scully nodded. "We'll have to be careful."

Mulder's eyes searched his partner's face, trying to determine her condition. "We have to get to Skinner with this as soon as possible," he said, glancing at the clock. It was nearing midnight.

"And I'm not leaving you here. How long until you think you can get up?"

He put his hand on her arm, and Scully briefly felt very strange.

In her mind, there was a slight shift. She looked down at his hand, and her vision seemed to stretch a little in either direction. She shook her head and it stopped, but not before leaving her with the impression that something about her partner was off.

"Scully?"

She looked up at him, trying to shake the unsettling feeling. But when she met his eyes, the feeling intensified. His features seemed stiff, abnormal.

 _It's not real_ , she thought in a panic. _This isn't Mulder. They've done something with him, and sent this impostor to kill me._

The room stretched again, ever so slightly. One of the walls warped oddly inward, then stopped just as soon as it had started. The change did not register in Scully's conscious mind, but it added to her unease and cemented her suspicions. _This isn't real. He isn't real._

Even as the thought came to her mind, she looked back up at his face and saw that it was not Mulder at all, but a strange man she'd never seen before.

Scully's mind raced. What was going on? Where was Mulder? And who was the man sitting with her? Somehow, he must be hypnotizing her to appear as her partner.

She knew that if she was going to get out of here alive, she had to keep her cool. She couldn't let the man know that she knew he wasn't Mulder. She forced a small smile onto her face before looking back down.

"I'm sorry, I'm still having a hard time putting thoughts together," she apologized. "I think I need just a few more minutes, then we can go."

Mulder looked at his partner with concern, but said nothing. He nodded and stood, walking to the kitchen to give her a few minutes to rest.

When he was gone, Scully sat up the rest of the way on the couch, her mind racing. She had to find a way to escape and get to her real partner. But fake Mulder would be keeping a watchful eye on her, under the guise of looking out for her safety. And he was armed. She'd seen the gun at his hip, just like Mulder wore. If they were thorough, he probably had an ankle holster like Mulder's, too.

This was Mulder's actual apartment, though, she decided. There would be no reason to stage a false environment to trick her if they already had him out of the picture. And she knew that Mulder kept a third firearm in the top drawer of his dresser in the bedroom.

Scully looked around anxiously. If she simply got up and went for the bedroom, he'd follow her, wondering what she was up to. Her eyes fell on the ruined sleeve of her jacket.

"Hey, um...my shirt is pretty destroyed," she said loudly enough that he'd hear her from the kitchen. "I'm going to find a shirt to borrow and change in your room."

Mulder glanced around the corner at her. "That's fine, Scully. Whatever you need." It didn't seem out of the ordinary to him; she'd borrowed clothes from him more than once in similar situations, and was familiar enough with his apartment to help herself.

Scully walked as calmly as she could into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She didn't even bother to change her shirt as she'd said, knowing that at any moment he could get suspicious and check on her. She went straight for the top drawer of the dresser, digging around in the socks for a moment before pulling out her partner's backup handgun. Quickly but quietly she checked the clip; it was full.

With one hand on the door knob and the other holding the gun down at her side, Scully paused to take a deep breath. The fear that she felt tightened its hold on her, and as it did, she tightened her finger around the trigger. She tensed to open the door, knowing it was kill or be killed. Almost more motivation was the thought of real Mulder in danger somewhere. She had to get to him.

Holding the gun slightly behind her, Scully stepped back into the living room. She could see the imposter's back facing her and crept slowly closer.

Hearing her, he turned.

"Scully, I thought you were going to change," he started, taking in her still disheveled attire. "I know there's at least one clean shirt in there."

His gaze landed on the awkward angle of the arm she held behind her, and Scully saw the alarmed glint of recognition come to his eyes. Before he could move, she brought the gun up, aiming at the center of his chest from several yards away.

XXX

Mulder's heart dropped into his stomach as he watched his partner draw the gun she must have stolen from his dresser.

He didn't have time to reach for his holstered sidearm, nor would he have done it anyway. He knew as soon as he saw Scully's wide, paranoid eyes and her shaking hands that they'd both been tricked.

Mulder raised his hands slowly away from his sides, showing her he wasn't going to try anything. Not that it likely mattered; he had no idea what she was seeing or thinking in her altered mental state. For all he knew, the version of him that Scully saw was running at her with a knife.

"Scully," he said cautiously, looking into her eyes. "It's me. Please put the gun down."

Scully clutched the gun tighter now in both hands, shaking as she looked wildly from his raised hands to his face.

"Keep your hands up," She said, her voice saturated with fear and desperation. "Where's Mulder?"

 _Christ_ , Mulder thought. _This is not good_. The only thing worse than Scully thinking he was attacking her was Scully thinking that he was an impostor, responsible for the death or disappearance of her real partner. He knew she'd kill to save his life, even if it was all in her head.

"Scully, it is me. I'm Mulder, and I'm fine. You're experiencing hallucinations." He kept his eyes on hers, his gaze pleading with her to see reason. "I don't know what you're seeing, but it isn't real."

Scully's eyes narrowed as she let his words sink in. She studied the man before her, wondering for a moment if he could be telling the truth. She shook her head slightly, dismissing the thought. It was all a trick. He'd made himself appear to her as Mulder at first, but she could see through the charade now.

She steadied her hands, keeping the gun level on his chest. "I know you're lying," Scully said almost in a growl. "I've seen your real face, and you're not Mulder. Where is he? What have you done to him?"

Her voice rose with panic as she spoke. She suddenly knew that they'd done something with her partner, something terrible. Horrified, she looked down at the man's hands, which were still held slightly away from his sides. They were splattered with blood.

"Oh, God," Scully choked, the gun starting to shake in her hands as the terrifying certainty took hold of her. "You killed him."

Mulder gaped. "No, Scully-"

"You killed him!"

"Scully, please!" Mulder yelled, holding his hands up higher. "Listen to me! It isn't real. I'm here, I'm alive, it's all a trick. You kill me and you'll be helping them cover it all up- everything we found. They want us both dead, and they're trying to make you do it."

The room twitched, like a bar of static had cut through her vision, and Mulder's face was his own again. Confused shock ran through her as the brief moment of lucidity showed Scully her partner's pleading eyes.

 _Shoot him_ , a voice was saying as it floated up from the depths of her mind. _Kill him or he'll kill you like he killed your partner._

Scully blinked, sweat starting to bead on her forehead. "Mulder," she forced out, struggling to keep his face from morphing back into the enemy. He could only watch helplessly as she fought against herself.

 _Kill him_ , the voice urged again, and Scully squeezed her eyes shut as she realized the words were her own..

"No..." she pleaded to no one, even as she felt her finger tightening on the trigger. She tried to pull away at the last second, but Mulder still crumpled as the shot rang out.

"NO!"

Scully's world twisted nauseatingly as she watched him fall. She clutched the gun with crushing force, as if it were her only lifeline, a single bare thread tying her to reality.

( _Real what is real_ )

Her head spun and Mulder's face turned back into the stranger's.

 _He's not dead (yet) he's reaching for his gun to shoot you._

As she watched, the scene flickered. One moment, the stranger was crawling towards her with a gun; the next, Mulder was lying still in a pool of blood.

 _You're not done yet, Agent Scully_ , the voice murmured in her ear as the Mulder vision won out. Scully let out an anguished cry. _You've killed your partner, now end the misery. You'll never be able to live with this._

Slowly, while tears and sweat mingled on her cheeks in a sheen of saltwater, Scully turned the gun on herself.


	8. Chapter 8

Pain ripped through Mulder's side as the bullet tore into the soft flesh just below his rib cage. The force of the impact knocked him back against the cupboards and he slid to the floor, clutching his side.

 _She shot me_ , he thought in a daze, his ears ringing with an unsettling high pitched tone. His head swayed unsteadily for a moment and he blinked at the blood spreading across the front of his shirt. Numb realization set in and he stared up at her in disbelief.

 _This is not how I die_ , he thought desperately. _Not Scully. Not this._

She was looking back down at him, but her eyes told him that she was in a different world entirely. As he slowly tried to get up, she leveled the gun on him once more, this time point blank at his head.

"No, Scully," he moaned, trying to reach her from behind the fear and confusion that clouded her mind. "I know you're in there. Don't do this."

As he spoke, tears rolled down her cheeks, though he didn't think she'd heard him. Her eyes had been locked on his, unseeing, but now they closed, blinking more tears into the heavy tracks that ran down her face.

Mulder clenched his teeth against the pain and pulled himself up onto his knees, ready to wrestle the gun from her hands in a last-ditch attempt to save his own life. But before he could, she turned the barrel to her own temple.

"Scully, NO!"

He launched himself at her, forgetting about his own wound. The gun was knocked from her hand and he heard it skitter across the floor.

Scully's self-defense instincts kicked in and she thrashed against him as they hit the floor. Mulder let out a choked cry of pain as her elbow connected heavily with his bullet wound, but kept his arms locked around her. After a moment, he was able to wrestle her onto her stomach, pinning her arms behind her back. He held her there for a moment, struggling to catch his breath.

"Scully," he panted into her hair as he stabilized himself, putting one knee on the ground and the other in the small of her back.

After a moment he realized he was shaking. "Goddammit, Scully, don't ever do that to me again." He wasn't talking about the shot she'd fired, but the one she almost had. He didn't bother to make the distinction, though; his words would have fallen on deaf ears.

Though Mulder had easily overpowered her, Scully kept struggling, albeit feebly. She'd broken into incoherent sobs, letting her face press against the floor. "I'll kill you," she choked, finally falling limp. "You bastard, I promise I'll kill you."

Mulder sighed, relaxing his grip a little. "Not today, Scully," he said grimly.

He cringed at what he had to do next. Still holding both her small hands in one of his, he reached down with his free hand and wiped a tear from her cheek. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, then pulled his gun from its holster and used the butt end to hit her hard in the back of the skull.

Beneath him, she slumped the rest of the way into stillness. Mulder quickly put two fingers to her throat and felt her pulse, steady and strong. Certain for the moment that she was safely unconscious, Mulder sank back against the cabinet, lifting his shirt to inspect the throbbing wound.

Blood was still seeping out, but not quickly enough to seriously alarm him. He wasn't going to bleed to death, but he still needed to get pressure on it to stop the bleeding until he could better tend to it. The pain was intense, and every time he moved it felt like getting shot all over again. But he knew he'd have to deal with it; there wasn't enough time to tend to himself now, and he still couldn't risk the hospital. Knowing that Scully had been drugged in order to kill him and herself, Mulder was sure there would be Pallister surveillance somewhere nearby to make sure that she'd succeeded, in case they needed to intervene and finish the job. He had to get them out of here, quickly and without being noticed.

That might be hard, he thought, since the entire building had just heard gunfire in the middle of the night.

Biting back a groan of pain, Mulder crawled back over Scully, unhooking the handcuffs he kept on his belt. He rolled her limp form over, cuffing her hands together in front of her. He knew he had no choice but to keep her restrained until the drugs wore off, but he'd at least try to make her comfortable.

When the cuffs were locked, Mulder stood, clutching his side tightly and trying not to cry out. Once he'd straightened up, the pain was a little more bearable. As he made his way to the bathroom, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number for his apartment manager, who was likely out of bed by now, having received calls from other concerned tenants.

"Yeah, hi, it's Fox Mulder," he said, trying to keep the strain out of his voice as he quickly went about grabbing first aid supplies from the mirror cabinet. His hands were already slick with blood, and it smeared across the shelves as he reached for antiseptic and bandages. "Yeah, fourth floor. I just wanted to apologize for the disturbance….um, my partner's gun misfired. No, everyone's fine. Don't call the police." He had a thought that might help cover their tracks. "No, she just collapsed. I'll be taking her to the hospital in a moment. Yes, she'll be fine. Thanks, Stan."

Stuffing the phone back into his pocket, Mulder grabbed a folded hand towel from off the shelf, pressing it against the hole in his side. Then with one hand he took off his belt, wrapping it around his torso and the makeshift bandage. He bit his lip as he tightened it, leaning heavily into the wall for support as pain lanced through his middle. Once the pain subsided slightly, he felt better; having pressure on the wound had slowed the bleeding considerably, and having the open flesh covered made him feel less vulnerable. Pulling his shirt back down, he gathered up the first aid supplies and stuffed them in a bag.

He strode quickly back to the kitchen, grabbing his coat from the back of a chair and pulling it on to conceal the macabre mess that was his blood-soaked white button down. Taking a deep breath, he knelt in front of his still-unconscious partner, carefully lifting her into his arms. He groaned through clenched teeth as he straightened up, his injured abdominal muscles screaming in protest. Scully's small form, which had felt almost light earlier when he'd carried her, was now a bag of bricks that sent spears through his side with every step. Taking deep breaths and willing himself not to pass out, Mulder got them out the door and into the elevator. When it opened on the first floor, a tired-looking young man gaped at them.

"Don't be alarmed," Mulder panted, not recognizing the boy. "I'm a federal agent. I'm taking this woman to the hospital."

The young man stared, clearly still alarmed. "Are- are you okay?" Mulder's jacket hadn't done a great job of concealing the blood.

"I'm fine," Mulder breathed. _And I don't have time for this_. "But help me out and get the door, will you?"

Dazed, the young man followed Mulder outside, holding the doors and then unlocking and opening the car for him. Mulder was unable to suppress the sharp gasp of pain that escaped when he bent to place Scully in the backseat, but the kid was wise enough to pretend not to notice.

"Thanks for your help," Mulder said, glancing around the lot before getting in the car. The kid nodded, staring as the car and the two agents pulled away.

XXX

All appeared quiet on the darkened road as Mulder drove quickly away from his apartment, but he still drove for almost an hour before deciding it was safe to stop. He chose an empty gravel lot next to a restaurant whose dark windows bore the sign 'CLOSED FOR THE SEASON'.

A quick glance told him that Scully was still out in the back seat. He put two fingers to her throat, checking her pulse as he'd decided to routinely do for the next 24 hours. It was a little quick, but still strong.

When he was satisfied that her condition was as stable as it could be for the moment, he turned back around, reclining his seat slightly and unbuttoning his shirt. Very carefully, he unlatched the belt and slid it off, gingerly peeling the blood-soaked towel off of his wound. Though the towel was thoroughly saturated, the wound was no longer bleeding.

Now that he was certain they weren't in any immediate danger, Mulder took the time to assess the damage. The bullet had gone through his left side, about an inch under his ribs and a few inches above his hip, exiting cleanly from the same point on his back. Fortunately, it was too far to the side to have hit anything vital; the muscles there had been pretty badly torn, but they would heal.

As he went about cleaning the area around the bullet hole, Mulder pondered his good fortune. Another couple inches and the bullet would have missed him entirely. Scully had been little more than ten feet away from him, and she was not one to miss a shot. He thought back to all the things she'd said in the height of the hallucination; clearly, she'd seen him as another man, and deduced that he was there to kill her, as he'd already, in her mind, killed Mulder. But for a moment, she'd seemed almost lucid, saying his name and seemingly trying to fight the impulse to shoot.

 _The drug isn't perfect yet_ , he realized. _They're still working out the kinks, and Scully was just another test subject._

This gave him hope- hope that Scully might be able to fight off the drug until it was out of her system. But it also filled him with dread, because it meant that they would continue testing on innocent people until they got it right; after they found and fixed their mistake.

Mulder took a wary glance out the window before he continued tending to his wound.

The road was still dark and empty, but they couldn't be too careful.

He uncapped the bottle of peroxide he'd grabbed and poured some onto the least - soiled corner of the bloody towel before pressing it with a sharp hiss into the wound. The muscles around the torn flesh spasmed as the antiseptic sizzled across exposed nerve endings. Gritting his teeth, Mulder repeated the process on the exit wound in his back before awkwardly binding the whole mess with a roll of gauze. It wasn't great, but it would do until Scully was able to fix it.

He turned and looked down at his partner's motionless form, his heart heavy with concern. He could still see the tracks on her cheeks where her anguished tears had not quite dried. Even unconscious, her expression seemed troubled, disturbed by whatever insanity had followed from her wakeful state.

With a sigh, Mulder put the car back in drive and continued on the dark road.


	9. Chapter 9

So I know it may seem like it, but we still haven't come full circle to the first chapter yet - we've got some more poor, paranoid Mulder and poor, drugged-up Scully interaction to get through before we get there. All in good time. (And then it gets real good, I think. Still formulating ideas.)

As always, enjoy, and please review! I'll take any critique or suggestions to heart.

X

XXX

As Mulder was contemplating where it would be safe to stop for the night, he heard Scully begin to stir. For a while she only mumbled distressed almost- sentences and Mulder listened quietly, waiting.

After a few minutes, she fell silent, and Mulder assumed she'd passed out again. He let out the breath he'd been holding and turned his full attention back to the road.

A moment later, he heard her stir again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement in the rear-view mirror, and suddenly a cold, crushing force tightened around his neck, pulling him back against the seat. Mulder gasped, trying to keep the wheel steady as one hand went to his throat, trying to pry in between his windpipe and the chain of Scully's handcuffs. He could hear her straining with exertion as she put all her strength into it, twisting her hands to pull the chain tighter.

Choking and gasping for breath, Mulder fumbled for the brake; if the car veered off the road, they might both be killed. Mercifully, he was able to bring the car to a stop, letting it lurch into the shoulder and throwing the shifter into park before twisting around in the seat. He'd managed to get two fingers of his left hand beneath the chain, opening up his airway enough to take a gulping breath. He reached his free arm into the backseat, grabbing her by the first bit he could reach; her hair. He yanked forward and she cried out, her grip loosening just enough for him to pull her forward by the chain of the handcuffs, giving himself enough room to pull his head through her arms.

Before she could recover and attack him again, Mulder drew his gun, putting the barrel inches from her face.

"Dammit, Scully, I don't want to shoot you!" He yelled. Eyes on the gun, she froze, recoiling a little bit. Mulder turned the rest of the way in his seat so he could fully see her. He wasn't sure if fear of death would be any motivation to a person so deep in drug-induced psychosis that she'd try to kill herself, but nothing else seemed to get through to her. He surreptitiously clicked the safety on, just in case she made a lunge for him.

"Sit back behind the passenger seat where I can see you," he commanded, motioning with the gun. His voice came out rough and gravelly, scratching painfully across his bruised windpipe. For a moment he coughed, rubbing his throat until the choking sensation subsided. Slowly, Scully acquiesced, fixing him with a hateful stare.

Mulder gave a sigh of relief at her compliance; she may still be deep inside an elaborate delusion, but at least his words were getting through to her. It was a small amount of progress.

"You know, it's going to be kind of hard to keep you alive if you keep trying to kill me," he said irritably. Scully's eyes narrowed.

"Keep me alive?" she scoffed. "Keep me alive until what? I know you're going to kill me eventually, so why the charade?" She breathed heavily, her eyes flashing with anger. "Why not just get it over with?"

"No one's going to kill you, Scully," Mulder said determinedly, almost trying harder to convince himself than her. "Not while I'm alive."

Scully raised her eyebrows slightly, her glare becoming a challenge.

"Careful how you choose your words."

Mulder shivered slightly. He'd always been awed by Scully's ability to intimidate, overpower, and take down the men she often faced off against in their line of work. He'd never really wondered how she was able to do it, usually just glad that she'd come back safe. But now, being perceived by her as an enemy, he completely understood.

 _She's probably given people nightmares_ , he thought, hoping to never be on the receiving end of that glare again.

"Hold your arms out," he said, choosing to ignore her threat. "I'm going to unlock one of your hands. When I do, you're going to thread the chain through the door handle and re-cuff yourself. Slowly." He switched the gun to his left hand, putting on his best icy 'I mean business' face.

Scully kept her eyes on him as she held out her hands; to anyone else, she'd look cold and defiant, but Mulder could see the fear she was trying to conceal. He slipped the key from his pocket and unlocked her left hand. Wordlessly, she did as he said.

Mulder reached back to make sure that she was secured, keeping the gun on her as he did. When he was satisfied that she wouldn't be strangling him again, he held up the gun for her to see.

"The safety was on," he said, watching her face as she saw that he was right. "I told you I'm not going to kill you. And I'm not going to let anyone else touch you, either."

He turned around, too hurt and tired to try talking any sense into her. He needed to find a safe place to rest and then figure out what to do next. Holstering his gun again, Mulder put the car back in drive.

A little less than a mile after he'd pulled back onto the road, they passed a pair of headlights at an intersecting road. The man in the other car waited for a minute before turning onto the same road, following the two agents north. Mulder didn't notice.

XXX

The sun was almost rising when they finally stopped, pulling into the lot of a dusty-looking little motel at the edge of some small town.

Mulder glanced into the backseat before getting out to secure a room. Scully had stayed quiet most of the drive after she'd tried to strangle him, only succumbing to a couple wild outbursts. She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she was lying quietly on her side in the backseat.

She might be faking it, he thought, but he had no choice but to leave her alone for a moment while he went inside to get keys to a room. She was in far more danger if he kept driving, because another mile and he'd have fallen asleep at the wheel.

He paid with cash, not wanting to risk being tracked by use of either his Bureau or personal credit cards. When he'd thanked the desk attendant, he went back to the car, pulling it as close to the room as he could.

He opened the back door, praying that she wouldn't wake as he uncuffed her from the handle. Thankfully, the combination of drugs, head injury, exertion, and general sleeplessness had her out like a light. Mulder frowned at that thought, being careful not to bump her head as he pulled her from the backseat and into his arms.

Once in the small, dim room, Mulder set Scully down on one of the twin-sized beds. The frame was simple white-enameled steel tubing which curved into a decorative arc at the head of the bed. Taking Scully's hands above her head, he looped the handcuffs over the steel frame.

It pained him to have to treat his partner and most trusted friend this way, and as he gazed down at her, he saw that her wrists were raw from the metal bands that circled them. Wincing at the pain in his side, Mulder bent to reposition her, moving her torso closer to the head of the bed to give the handcuffs some slack.

 _There's nothing else you can do for her until she's herself again_ , he thought tiredly. Making sure the door was locked and the blinds were closed, he lowered himself carefully onto the other mattress.

Mulder was exhausted, physically and mentally, from the events of the past day. He could have fallen asleep in an instant, but he needed to take care of something first. He took the phone from off the motel nightstand, dialing and cradling it against his ear.

"Skinner," the voice on the other end said curtly after a few rings.

"It's Mulder. Are you alone?"

"Yeah, I haven't even left for the office yet. Why are you calling me at 6 a.m., Agent Mulder?"

Mulder glanced over his shoulder to make sure Scully was still asleep.

"Sir, I'm in a bit of trouble. You're the only person I could trust to contact."

"What kind of trouble?" Skinner sounded alarmed. "Where's Agent Scully?"

"She's with me, and she's worse off than I am. We both need medical attention, but I'm afraid to go to any hospital. There are some very dangerous and well-connected people after us."

He gave Skinner the short version of the story, explaining the basis of the investigation but not mentioning the part where Scully had shot him.

"Jesus, Mulder, why didn't you call for backup?"

Mulder sighed. He'd asked himself the same question many times throughout the night, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. "I have a strong feeling that the men developing this drug have their hands in a lot of other cookie jars besides Pallister Pharmaceutical," he said grimly. "Which would lead me to believe that they have connections within the government, maybe even someone backing them at the FBI. Calling for backup could have gotten me and Scully killed."

Skinner sighed, and Mulder could picture him pacing. "Well, where are you now?"

"We're at a motel somewhere north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I needed to get Scully out of there and I thought we had a tail, so I just drove away from DC as fast as I could. I'm going to try to wait out her symptoms here."

The line was quiet for a moment. "Alright, what do you need from me?"

 _Good, he's on board,_ Mulder thought _._

"I need you to gather up the old case files I was studying- they are probably still sitting out on my desk, and they all have connections between murder/suicide cases and this pharmaceutical company. Look through the files yourself if you want to, but I promise it's all there. You'll need to assemble a team to go check the place out; there's a warehouse at the southern end of the complex that contains a lab. I didn't have a chance to check it out, but obviously Scully found something incriminating in there, and if we don't get to them fast they're going to sweep it all under the rug."

"Wait, back up for a moment," Skinner said, starting to sound angry. "You and Scully were investigating this company - a powerful and respected corporation, I'm sure I don't need to remind you - based on old, closed cases?"

Mulder was silent.

"And now you want me to barge in on them with next to no evidence, accuse them of illegal experimentation, kidnapping of a federal employee, and a host of other things, and ask them to show me their secret lab?"

Mulder couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Sir, are you saying that you don't believe me?" He demanded angrily. "Agent Scully's life may be in danger, and you want to argue politics instead of finding the men responsible for this?"

Skinner interrupted before Mulder could launch into a crazy, impassioned rant.

"Mulder, you know I believe you," he snapped, insulted that after years of working together, his agents still sometimes found it hard to trust him. "I'm just being realistic. I don't know if I can get a warrant with so little evidence, not without Agent Scully here to testify to her experiences."

Mulder pinched the bridge of his nose. He had to remember to keep his voice down, or Scully would wake again and make everything more complicated.

"You'll have to find a way, Sir, because this drug is affecting Scully in ways that I've never seen before. If we don't bring this to light, or at least get our hands on a sample of whatever she was injected with, it could have lasting effects on her health."

Skinner sighed on the other end. "I'll do what I can, Mulder. No guarantees. In the meantime, take care of Scully. If her condition worsens, I want her in a hospital."

"Yes, Sir."

Mulder tossed the cell phone down, falling exhaustedly back against the pillows. A glance to his left confirmed that Scully was still out, and before another moment could pass, Mulder closed his eyes and let himself fall asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone! I can't seem to stop myself from writing this story at every free moment I find, so updates are going to keep happening quickly. As always, give me your thoughts!

X

XXX

Mulder slept for most of the day uninterrupted. With no stimuli to trigger her hallucinations, Scully had remained in a sleeping state as well, though her body had begun to burn with fever.

In her dreams, her world was miserably twisted and upside down. Nothing was as it seemed, and everywhere she turned there was confusion, fear, and a terrible sense of loss.

She tossed and turned, mumbling fitfully as a heavy sweat broke across her brow and cheeks.

Her partner woke at none of this- though he had stayed upright and functional throughout the ordeal, it had mostly been adrenaline that kept him going. When Mulder had finally let himself relax enough to succumb to sleep, his slender form stayed completely motionless, his breathing shallow and his heart rate low as his body tried to regain strength and energy. Though he hadn't lost enough blood to pass out of the spot, he was definitely weakened.

During the hours that the two agents slept, a black sedan sat on the other end of the parking lot, its lone occupant apparently having nothing better to do than sip his coffee and read the newspaper.

When Mulder finally woke, it was to the shrill ring of his cellular phone. He bolted upright from a dead sleep, reaching for his gun. When the phone rang again, bringing Mulder to his senses, he sighed, running and hand through his hair before picking up.

"Yeah," he answered groggily, glancing around the room. Scully hadn't moved, thank god. The digital clock on the nightstand read 6:03. The light that filtered through the blinds was soft and dim, indistinguishable as dusk or dawn.

 _Have I been asleep for twelve minutes or twelve hours?_

He decided it must be the latter, based on the stiff aching of his body.

"Mulder, it's Skinner. I've got some bad news. The files you told me about are gone. You must have been right about them having someone on the inside. I've been trying to find a loophole, but without any tangible evidence I can't get men into that building."

Mulder cursed under his breath, standing up to pace the room.

When he said nothing else, Skinner asked, "How's Scully?"

"I don't know, I just woke up. I'll check on her now."

Setting the phone down on the bed, Mulder approached her cautiously. Her eyes were half open but unfocused. Every few seconds, her lips would move soundlessly.

Mulder's stomach clenched uneasily when he saw the beads of sweat that had formed on her face. He put his fingers to her neck to feel her pulse rapid and fluttery.

He reached behind him, not taking his eyes off her face as he picked the phone back up.

"Not good," he said grimly. "She's got a fever. If this thing lasts 24 hours like Scully thought, she still has about 5 hours left. If she gets any worse during that time I'll have to get to a doctor."

He reached down to brush back a sweaty strand of hair that was sticking to her forehead.

"I may be able to help you with that, at least," Skinner said. "I've managed to track down an old friend of Scully's from medical school. She works out of a hospital that shouldn't be more than a couple hours from where you are. She's agreed to take you both in off the record." Skinner paused. "I'm pretty sure she can be trusted."

Mulder breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, tell me where I'm going."

He pulled a pad of paper and a pen from the motel room nightstand and copied down the phone number for Dr. Shelly Hilton as well as directions to the hospital.

When he'd thanked the Assistant Director and hung up the phone, Mulder wasted no time in gathering up his things and his partner. He lifted her gently, for the moment not concerned that she would wake and react to his touch; whatever stage the drug was in, it had rendered her sickly and weak while he slept. Feeling her clammy brow and her limp limbs, he felt bad having kept her cuffed to the bed all day.

"Hang in there, Scully," he said quietly as he eased her back down in the car. "We're going to get you some help."

Though it pained him to do so, Mulder once again tethered her to the car door. Whatever was happening to Scully was happening quickly and intensely; for all he knew she could be up and trying to choke him again in the blink of an eye.

When they'd turned back onto the road, the man in the black sedan suddenly lost interest in his paper, putting the car in drive to follow.

XXX

An hour or so into their drive, Scully's fever broke. Mulder had been reaching back every twenty minutes or so to check her heart rate, and to his immense relief, he found that it had strengthened again. Her skin felt warm under his fingers, but not burning as it had been.

At his touch, she began to stir.

Mulder withdrew his hand and, as before, waited quietly for her to come to.

It took another ten minutes; all the while Mulder watched the road, but his other senses were honed sharply in on the backseat. He could sense her stirring, and finally she sat up.

It was clear that she was at least semi-lucid, because she took great care to be quiet as she pulled herself upright. Mulder tensed, expecting another episode of murderous, hateful Scully trying stealthily to kill him.

A little afraid of her silence, he turned to look. But the face he saw peering at him from the shadowy backseat was not homicidal or enraged; on the contrary, she looked frightened of him.

Mulder's heart leapt a little as he saw the clarity in her wary eyes. She may not know what's going on, but she's rational. Maybe that fever burned off the rest of the drug.

"Easy," he said quietly, wanting to allay her fears. "No one's going to hurt you."

 _I would never hurt you,_ he wanted to tell her, stung by the mistrust he saw in her guarded expression. _And we're going to make the sorry fools who tried to kill you pay._

Instead he turned back around, shifting the rear view mirror so he could see her without being turned away from the road.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

In the mirror, Scully glanced down, but not before he saw the flash of panic in her eyes. She frowned, almost as if debating whether or not to talk to him.

"I don't remember anything," she said quietly, and her eyes met his in the mirror again. They were dark, suspicious. "Where are you taking me?"

Mulder let his hopes rise- so far, she sounded like his Scully. He knew there'd be memories missing. Her confusion, her wariness, her systemic breakdown of the situation were all ways that Dana Scully would normally act upon waking up handcuffed to a car with no explanation.

If she was pulling out of it, she was probably still having a hard time separating what was real and what wasn't. He decided not to overload her with too much information just yet.

"Someplace safe," he said sincerely, promising to fill her in more later.

Her eyes found his in the reflection, careful and questioning. Her next words hurt bad, worse than he'd have thought they could.

"Who are you?"

 _We're not out of the woods yet, Scully_ , he remembered saying to her the night before; probably the last words he spoke to her before it wasn't her anymore, but the deadly, manipulative product of the drug's psychosis. The same was still true.

After a whispered curse Mulder caught himself, trying not to react in any way she could see. It made him ache with the realization of how much he missed her. They'd been together almost constantly for the past two days, but for most of that, she had not been his partner. Not knowing who was going to be there when she opened her eyes, or whether or not that person would try to kill him, was exhausting. He wanted it over.

Staying calm for the sake of reassuring her, he told her her name and his, compelling her to remember. Predictably, she weighed the truth of his words against the fact that she seemed a prisoner in the backseat.

 _Trust me_ , he wanted to say, _I hated doing that._

But instead he tiredly explained the situation, giving just enough detail to sate her wary curiosities.

She almost looked ready to trust him when she was struck by a fresh wave of symptoms. Mulder's heart sank as she cried out from behind him, watching her clutch her head in agony and confusion.

He bit his tongue, knowing that she wouldn't even remember his comforting words if he spoke them. But when she called out, it was his name she cried. Still aware enough to communicate, she begged him not to release her, in case she tried to hurt him again.

Mulder kept his eyes on the road, trying not to listen as his partner lost control once more, as his most trusted friend slipped within moments of recognizing him to believing that she would kill him.

He fought the crushing hurt that accompanied her murderous words for the better part of an hour until she finally fell tired. Not long after, Mulder approached the hospital. As he flipped his phone open and dialed the number that would connect him to Dr. Shelly Hilton, he could still hear Scully mumbling weak but sincere threats at him from the back seat.

Hilton acknowledged his approach and promised to meet them at the back door. Anxious to be done with this, Mulder maneuvered the car quickly around to the rear wing of the hospital as directed, and saw light flooding out of an open door. Pulling up close to the sidewalk, Mulder took the keys out of the ignition and left Scully in the car to greet the woman standing in the doorway.

"Dr. Hilton?" He offered his hand as she approached. "I'm Fox Mulder, Dana's partner."

Shelly Hilton nodded, shaking his hand firmly and giving him a concerned smile. "It's nice to meet you, Agent Mulder, though I must say the circumstances are unfortunate."

Glancing to the backseat where Scully still lay handcuffed, she took him by the arm and walked a few paces back toward the door so they could talk without her overhearing. In the light from the hallway, Mulder saw her features more clearly; she was short and thin, though not as much of either as Scully. She was around his age, with smooth dark skin and a strong jaw. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, adding to the business-like demeanor already present in her scrubs and long lab coat.

"Based on what little we do know about Dana's condition, I'm a little conflicted about what to do with her," the doctor started, her expression troubled. "I'm going to want to give her fluids intravenously, as well as take some blood for testing. Whatever that may turn up, I may need to run more involved tests."

Mulder nodded, knowing this wasn't going to be easy. "I'll help in any way I can," he said solemnly.

"I'm sure I'll need it," Shelly said grimly. "Not knowing the exact nature of this substance, I'm hesitant to administer any other drugs. That being said, I think we can risk a mild sedative. The chances of Dana having a paranoid or violent reaction to these procedures and injuring someone are too great to proceed without every possible caution."

Her eyes flicked down to the bloody mess of shirt that was peeking out of his jacket. "I was told there may have already been injuries sustained," she edged.

"I'm fine," Mulder said curtly, pulling the jacket closed around his middle. "We can worry about that after Scully is taken care of."

Shelly nodded, having anticipated this response. "Good. At Mr. Skinner's request, I'm not involving any of my staff in this, so I'll likely need your help to get her…..situated."

"Of course," Mulder sighed, running a hand through his hair. "She's been fairly unpredictable for the past 20 hours or so, but it's safe to say she'll try to kill us if she gets a chance. I've got her cuffed to the door handle for now."

Stepping through the doorway, Shelly retrieved a wheeled stretcher and rolled it over to the car. Mulder saw that the straps, normally just soft velcro to hold an injured patient in place, were thick leather belts. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. Shelly looked at him with an expression of mixed nervousness and pity.

"Alright, let's get this over with," he said grimly. He walked back to the car and opened the rear door opposite from Scully.

XXX

Once again not certain who she was or what was happening, Scully huddled in the back of the car, trying to clear her head enough to remember. Outside in the dark, she heard a conversation held in quiet voices, too far away to make out any words. The voices belonged to a man and a woman, neither of whom she could see.

She felt nauseous, trying to keep her head upright as her body trembled. She knew she had to stay alert and find out what they were doing with her. When the door opened, she shrank back, recognizing the man immediately.

"You stay away from me, Hunt," she hissed as a garbled memory of her encounter with the doctor surfaced in her mind.

In the confines of the backseat, the distance she'd tried to put between them was useless. Hunt moved in, pinning her legs beneath his knee.

"We're taking you into the hospital now," he said as he reached to unlocked her handcuffs. "If you struggle, we'll have no choice but to sedate you."

Terrified by the words 'hospital' and 'sedate', Scully did struggle, thrashing against his arms and trying to brace her feet against the frame of the car door. "No!" she cried, her voice thick with fear. "Get off me!"

It was no use; her captor was far bigger and stronger than she, and in moments had her out and pinned against the side of the car. The closeness of his body at her back repulsed her and she pulled against his grip harder, her breath coming in panicked gasps as he forcefully stretched out her left arm.

"No!" Scully yelled, more desperately this time as she saw another set of hands approach her vulnerable exposed skin with a syringe. She flashed back to the men in the lab again, certain that they were dosing her with more of the drug.

The needle pricked, the plunger pushed down, and the small, dark hands disappeared. As Scully slowly lost the ability to fight back, the pressure behind her disappeared, only to return under her legs a moment later. Her world tipped as someone lifted her off her feet.

Scully weakly tried to struggle as she was set down on the stretcher, and Hunt's accomplice began tightening straps around her wrists. A wave of crushing betrayal swept over her as she recognized the woman. "Shelly?" she choked, feeling tears form in her eyes. "Oh my God, you're part of this."

It was too much to handle. She remembered Hunt and the syringe in the lab, she remembered shooting Mulder, but seeing her old med school friend being the one to strap her down and inject her was the breaking point. Scully collapsed against the gurney and started to cry.

"Please, no more," she begged as the wheeled her through the back door into the hospital. "Please, you already m-made me kill my partner. Goddamn you! Mulder's d-dead...I don't know what else you want."

She clenched her fists weakly against the restraints as she felt the haze of the sedative numb her body and mind, heartbroken at her own powerlessness. "I don't know what else…..you..want…"

XXX


	11. Chapter 11

For anyone who may have lost track of my silly timeline, in the middle of last chapter we made it full circle to the opening scene. Now we enter uncharted waters...

You guys have been wonderful with the reviews, I can't tell you how awesome it feels to get so much good feedback! Also, some of your comments are making me rethink my plot trajectory...that's all I'll say on that matter for now. (Keep it coming though, you're a big help)

PS sorry in advance for naming Dr. Hilton 'Shelly', I realized a while ago that for people who read stupid fast like I do, relying on first and last letter cues for their words, its going to be hard to keep Shelly and Scully separate. I tried to change her name, but I just really didn't like anything else. So read slowly. And enjoy!

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As they wheeled her through the double doors and down the short hall to the private room that Dr. Hilton had procured, Scully continued to cry softly, never falling fully unconscious; the sedative she'd been given was unfortunately not strong enough to put her out. She was, however, helpless to fight back as they transferred her to a bed and re-strapped her wrists. All the while, Mulder bit his tongue, knowing that any comforting words he spoke would be misconstrued in her mind and would only serve to compound on her misery.

When Scully was secured in the small, private room, hooked up to a saline IV and a heart monitor, Mulder stepped outside, leaning against the wall and burying his face in his hands. A moment later, Dr. Hilton followed, closing the door behind them.

For several long moments, neither of them spoke or moved. Finally, Mulder took a deep breath and straightened up. He wore a haunted expression, his eyes puffy with unshed tears as he turned to the doctor. Shelly looked pretty shaken up as well. She put a hand on his arm.

"That was hard," she said quietly. "Harder than I thought it would be. But hopefully the worst is over. I'm going to need your help in there for the next few hours still. Are you going to be ok?"

Physically, he was far from ok. As they spoke, Shelly could swear the dark circles under his eyes had grown deeper, and his skin had taken on a chalky pallor that she knew was due to the blood loss and absolute lack of sustenance he'd experienced over the past day. The man was dead on his feet, but she knew that he wouldn't be stopped by it, not until he knew his partner was safe.

She meant mentally; seeing Scully break down at the half-false memory of shooting and killing him had been almost too much for him to handle.

Mulder met her gaze with heavy eyes. "I'll have to be, won't I? We're all she's got right now."

He brushed past her, back into Scully's room, putting a grateful hand on her shoulder as he passed. Shelly stood in the hall for another moment before following.

XXX

Between the sedative Dr. Hilton had administered and what was hopefully the final grip of the mind-control drug, Scully lay weak and delirious on the bed. They'd moved her to an actual hospital bed, but the straps around her wrists remained. Next to the bed, an array of screens beeped and flashed, monitoring her vitals.

Dr. Hilton flitted about the room, checking the monitors and marking her findings on a chart. Her face was tight with concentration, and she didn't speak to Mulder besides to ask for his help holding Scully still when she needed to draw blood.

Occasionally she'd ask for him to grab her something from across the room or to call off readings from the monitors, but otherwise he sat in a chair beside the bed, holding his partner's hand.

Mostly too far gone to understand where she was or who was with her, Scully simply accepted the comforting gesture, squeezing his hand back tightly. Or maybe she didn't consciously acknowledge it at all, and her grip was an instinctive response the trauma her body had been through. Either way, it put Mulder's heart a little more at ease.

After a couple hours of this, Dr. Hilton beckoned to Mulder from across the bed. He stood, anxiously awaiting instruction.

"I think I have a notion of how to treat this," Shelly started, and Mulder noticed a hint of apprehension in her voice. "But her body may have a bad reaction to the drug I'm going to give her. I need you to be ready, Mulder, in case we need to resuscitate her. Dana may go into cardiac arrest."

Mulder swallowed. "What are the chances that we won't be able to get her back?"

Her answering look was anything but reassuring. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I'm operating entirely on speculation here. I only know that we have no other choice." She paused, taking a shaky breath. "I can't explain it, but whatever this is in her system, it's changing. Instead of wearing off, it's starting to affect her brain in new ways. I'm afraid that if we don't act now, we may lose her anyway."

Mulder felt like something had struck him hard in the chest, forcing all the air from his lungs. Unable to speak, he nodded. Whatever happened now, he had no choice but to trust her.

The tension in the room was thick as Shelly went about prepping everything that might be needed if Scully's heart stopped. Beads of cold sweat had started forming on Mulder's forehead, and he saw Shelly anxiously swipe across her brow with the back of her sleeve as she began to perspire as well.

Trying not to think of how completely insane this all was, she gave Mulder a crash course on how to assist her if they needed to use the defibrillator. She didn't need to mention that in this situation, it would be pass or fail.

"Alright," she said tensely as she prepared to push what she hoped was the right dosage of the right drug into Scully's IV tube. Across from her, Mulder gave an encouraging nod. He was alert and ready to move if needed, but his hand was still clutching his partner's.

Shelly watched the heart monitor as the solution dripped into the IV bag, slowly entering Scully's bloodstream. Though Scully's face remained still, her eyes half-closed; her body tensed, her back arching ever so slightly off the mattress. The steady beeping of the machine tracking her pulse started to rise in tempo, becoming increasingly frantic in its beat. Mulder's heartbeat quickened right along with it, his body tensing as he glanced from his partner's unresponsive face to Dr. Hilton's, waiting for the sign to act.

After a moment, the beeping steadied and Scully fell still, settling deeper into the bed with a long, slow exhalation of breath.

At this, Shelly relaxed, giving Mulder a weak smile before stepping back from the bed. Mulder let out the breath he'd been holding, releasing Scully to run his hands over his face. After a moment, he looked back up at the doctor.

"What now?" he was almost afraid to ask.

She shook her head slightly to indicate that it was out of her control "Now we wait for her to wake up," She said simply. "I want to take a couple blood samples over to the lab to make sure there's nothing I missed here. You should stay with Dana. She should be stable now, but if anything happens, call my cell phone."

She started walking away, but turned back when she got to the door.

"I'll bring a suture kit to stitch up that bullet hole in your side," she said with a knowing glance at his shirt. "So be ready to sit still for a few moments when I get back."

Mulder managed a grateful smile before sinking back down in the chair beside the bed. After a moment, Shelly slipped out and closed the door behind her with a quiet click.

When she was gone, Mulder took his partner's hand again, rubbing gently across her knuckles with his thumb. Barely conscious, Scully murmured a soft noise of gratitude and grasped his hand back weakly.

Tiredly, Mulder stared down at her, determined to sit in vigil until she woke. But as he sat waiting for her eyes to open, the steady metronome of the heart monitor lulled away all focused thought from his mind and his own eyelids started to droop. He jerked back upright several times, trying to fight it, but eventually his exhaustion won out. When Shelly peeked back into the room less than an hour after she'd left, Mulder was fast asleep, snoring lightly into Scully's stomach.


	12. Chapter 12

As Scully started to wake, a light, steady cadence permeated into her subconscious mind, appearing in her dream as the bell tone of the elevator as it passed every floor on the way to her higher destination.

She had started deep underground, much farther than the basement office, in a place where the darkness was impenetrable. She didn't know how long she'd been there, but the pressing dark was so thick it seemed to follow her up for miles before any light could break through. The steady beep was her only comfort, letting her know she was, in fact, moving towards the surface. Finally, the dim beginnings of luminescence crept in around the corners of her awareness, though she could not figure out where it could be coming from if she was in an elevator.

Vaguely aware that something was off, Scully tried to move closer to the light. She realized she could not, because there was some unseen force holding her back. Confused, she turned her head, only to be greeted by the soft pressure of a pillow against her cheek.

Once the one detail had clicked, the rest of it made sense, bringing her the rest of the way into reality. Gravity asserted itself among her senses and she realized she was on her back. In bed. There was a warm weight on her abdomen, out of place but not unwelcome. The beep was not an elevator, but a monitor. The white light that seeped through her closed eyelids confirmed it before she opened them.

 _Hospital bed._ She thought. _What happened?_

Her head felt heavy, so she didn't try to lift it, but she slowly opened her eyes, needing to see her surroundings to figure out what she was doing here. Fortunately, the first thing she saw was a comfort.

More than once she'd woken to the confusion of being in the hospital, only to have her partner ready and waiting by her bedside to make sure that she was alright and to explain the situation. But this time was different; instead of anxiously staring down into her just-opened eyes, he was out like a light, slumped forward out of his chair with his head nestled on her stomach like it was a pillow. As she took in the scene, he snored lightly.

Scully smiled affectionately down at him, moving to wake him with a gentle tousle of his hair. Only, she couldn't move her hands. Frowning, she saw that the hospital bed was equipped with thick straps which had been fastened around her wrists. One of her hands was held in Mulder's, but he'd obviously made no move to free her.

Looking around the room, she saw no medical personnel or anything that might indicate why she'd been restrained. If not for Mulder asleep on the bed, she would have started to panic. As it was, he was there; obviously trying to take care of her. Whoever had strapped her down must have had a good reason, or he wouldn't have let it happen.

"Mulder," she said, though her voice was hoarse for lack of use. She cleared her throat and tried again. At the sudden movement in her diaphragm, his eyes flew open. "What-"

She stopped abruptly at the look on his face; wary, untrusting. It was a look she knew well, but never directed at her. He'd slipped his hand from hers and straightened up. He was studying her face intensely, waiting for her to speak. He almost seemed a little afraid of what he might hear.

Scully looked down at her hands again, then back to his face.

"Why am I tied to a hospital bed?"

At first he made no answer, staring at her for a moment longer before he dropped his eyes, looking a little ashamed. When he looked back up, his expression was apologetic, but still wary.

"I...I'm sorry, I think we need to start from the beginning," he stammered. He ran a hand through his hair nervously, like he always did when he was overwhelmed or upset. Scully waited patiently, still very confused. "Do you know who you are?"

Scully stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before realizing that he was taking her through standard questions that indicated she'd been through some sort of trauma.

"Dana Scully," she said, knowing she had to go through the motions before he'd tell her anything else. Mulder looked only slightly relieved before he moved on to the next question.

"Scully….do you know who I am?"

She could tell he was trying to appear indifferent as he waited for her answer, but Scully saw the pain in his eyes as clear as day. Her expression softened as her heart went out to him.

"Of course I do, Mulder," she said softly, then added, "You're too damn crazy to forget."

Mulder let out a half-chuckle, immense relief washing over him. He put his face in his hands, not letting Scully see his reaction. When he looked back up at her after a few moments, the tension and fear were gone from his face, but his smile was still guarded.

He took her hand back in his, still not acknowledging the restraints. He seemed only to want to comfort her and make sure she was ok, so she decided to go along with his agenda and deal with being tied up for the moment.

"What do you remember?" he asked, squeezing her hand gently.

Scully thought about it, trying to recall the last thing that had happened to her.

"Um...we turned in our report on the Maryland case to Skinner," she started, pulling fuzzy memories of an uncharacteristically warm fall day from her mind. "We left the office early and went to the coffee shop for a couple hours. On my way home I stopped by my mom's, I think."

The look on Mulder's face told her that these were not the memories he was hoping for. For a moment he didn't say anything, and she could tell he was trying to mentally regroup.

"How far off?" she asked quietly.

His eyes were troubled when they met hers, and he knew he couldn't lie to her. "That was four days ago, Scully."

Scully cursed, letting her head fall back to the pillow and staring at the ceiling for a moment. "Alright, well help me out," she beseeched him, sitting back up as much as she could. "What happened to me? Or do you not know either?"

He glanced down, but not before his face gave him away. He knew enough.

"I don't think I should tell you everything just yet," he said, sounding uncertain and a little uncomfortable.

Scully let out a frustrated sigh. "Well, I'm clearly not going anywhere," she grumbled. "Can I at least have the censored version? I'd like to know why I'm stuck here, Mulder. I kind of have to pee."

He gave her a look, ignoring her jab. He didn't want to get his hopes up, but it definitely seemed to be the real Scully this time. She definitely had the Scully guile that he loved and hated so much.

Mulder sighed as well, resolving to tell her parts of the story.

"We were investigating a murder-suicide," he started. "A young construction worker took out a wealthy business investor in his home, then bit the barrel. Ring any bells?"

Scully thought for a moment then shook her head. Mulder told her of his suspicions, of her findings in Miller's autopsy, even of their reports back to each other over chinese food in the basement. Tiny pieces of the narrative seemed vaguely familiar, but nothing jumped out until he mentioned her visit to question Dr. Brontman.

"I remember that!" she said suddenly, interrupting. She could recall sitting in Richard Brontman's office, discussing the deceased Ray Miller. Mulder gave her an encouraging smile before he continued.

He told her of how she'd gone back to Pallister later that night, making it a point to ask if she remembered what she'd found in the warehouse. Scully couldn't bring anything to light, but she was starting to feel unsettled by the direction the narrative was going. By the time Mulder stopped at finding her unconscious in the chair, she looked outright alarmed.

"You, um...you were in pretty bad shape, Scully," Mulder said haltingly, not wanting to lie but also not wanting to overwhelm her with the truth either.

"Ever since I got you out of that warehouse, I've been trying to figure out exactly what happened. I thought they were going to kill you, so we've been kind of on the run for the past day or so. You were having psychotic episodes, so I had no choice but to keep you tied up. To be honest, I'm still not one hundred percent sure that it's out of your system, which is why…." he trailed off, gesturing miserably at her wrists.

Scully was silent for a moment, struggling to take it all in. She could tell he was purposely only telling her pieces of the story, but the most important detail was easily deduced:

"They caught me in the warehouse and drugged me…..with the same thing they gave Raymond Miller." It wasn't a question, but the look in Mulder's eyes confirmed it anyway.

"Oh, God," she gasped suddenly, as the next logical thought hit her. "I didn't….you didn't let me hurt anyone, right? That's what this-" she clenched the bound hand that still held his "- is about?"

He wouldn't meet her eyes at first, and Scully's heart dropped.

"Mulder!" her voice was panicky but firm, forcing him to look at her again. "I didn't kill anyone..?"

He shook his head, grateful for the loophole in her question. "No, Scully. I didn't let you kill anyone." He almost left it at that, then decided he owed her a more truthful answer. "Though you certainly tried."

Scully gaped. "Who…..?"

Mulder leaned in again, partially to hunch against the bed in case his bloody shirt was showing, and partially to run a hand across her cheek, calming her.

"Shh, Scully, everyone's fine. Don't worry about it right now. I'm going to call Dr. Hilton back in to take a look and make sure you're okay. After that, we'll get some food in you, get you some fresh clothes, and then we can talk some more."

After a moment, Scully calmed under his touch and nodded, relaxing back into the pillow. She closed her eyes for a moment and Mulder took the opportunity to stand up quickly and turn away from her, making sure his jacket was closed and buttoned. He pulled out his cell and selected the most recent call. When Shelly picked up, she sounded alarmed, asking if everything was ok. Mulder quickly assured her that everything was fine, but requested that she return right away to check Scully out.

When the door opened, Scully opened her eyes, looking pleasantly surprised to see the familiar face of her doctor.

"Shelly? How'd you get pulled into all of this?" she asked with a smile.

Shelly and Mulder exchanged a glance, both remembering Scully's accusing words to her friend under the influence of the drug. They quickly looked away from each other and Shelly smiled back down at her friend, genuinely glad to see her awake and herself again.

"Your partner and Mr. Skinner were very worried about you," she said, giving Mulder another glance. "They called me to care for you in secret, in case….well, I'm sure you know. You both seem to have made some enemies." She came around to Scully's bedside. "Anyway, it's good to see you, Dana. I'm glad you seem to be doing better."

Mulder stepped towards the door. "Got a couple calls I gotta make," he said to both of them, holding up his phone. "I'll be right outside if you need me."

Out in the hall, he dialed first to Skinner's cell, quickly updating him on Scully's improved condition and inquiring about new leads. The Assistant Director had made no further progress. Thanking him, Mulder hung up and found a different number in his contacts. The phone answered after one ring and three voices chimed in at the same time, demanding to know what had happened after their last encounter.

"Easy, boys," Mulder said with a chuckle. "It's been a weird couple of days, but Scully and I are alright. I'll fill you in later. Right now, I just need Byers. There's something I'm hoping you can hack for me…."

XXX

X

If you made it this far, good job wading through all the angst in that last chapter. As a reward, you get Scully back. Let me know how you liked it!


	13. Chapter 13

**Heads up, this chapter is going to get kind of graphic for a while.** Writing the scene where Mulder is having his bullet wound looked at, I flashed back to a similar (no, i've never been shot) hospital experience I had when I was younger and started writing in a lot more detail that originally intended. I tried to keep it from being too terribly anxiety-inducing, but I couldn't help myself. Sorry in advance if it makes you queasy.

Other than that, I think you'll all like this one. Coherent Scully, snarky Mulder, paranoia, angst, hurt/comfort, the works. Enjoy and review!

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XXX

When Mulder slipped back into the room, Dr. Hilton was untying the straps that had held Scully to the bed. She might not have a clean bill of health just yet, but the fact that the doctor was confident she wouldn't have any more episodes made Mulder grin widely as he approached them.

Scully smiled back tiredly as Shelly hit the button that inclined the back half of the bed, allowing her to sit up while still supported. Mulder stood to the side, watching as the doctor set the bowl of soup she'd brought in on the bed tray at Scully's side, helping her to take a few spoonfuls and chase it down with some water.

When she was satisfied that her patient had consumed enough of the light broth for the time, Dr. Hilton unhooked the IV tube that was inserted in Scully's arm and caught Mulder's eye.

"Alright, I know you probably think you're fine," she said to Scully. "But I want you to stay here, drink your water and rest for a while. There's a private bathroom in here," she pointed to a door a couple yards for the bed. "But other than that, stay put. I'm going to talk to your partner in the next room for a little while. If you need anything that can't wait for us to get back, press the panic button."

Scully nodded, making a show of settling down in the bed to get comfortable.

Dr. Hilton beckoned to Mulder. "Come on, Fox," she said, heading for the door that joined Scully's room with another just like it.

Watching them go, Scully couldn't help but feel a little suspicious; she hadn't missed the look that had passed between them. She knew there was something they weren't telling her. Doing her best to push the thought from her mind, she relaxed against the pillows, trying to let her body recover.

XXX

"Alright, let's get this over with," Mulder said as he peeled off his jacket and blood-crusted button down, setting them on a nearby cart. Shelly cut away the spent gauze and motioned for him to lie down on the examination table. The hard leather was cold against his back.

Mulder had barely thought about his wound since he'd attempted to bandage it in the car, only an hour or so after Scully had shot him, now over twenty-four hours ago. His adrenaline levels had been keeping the pain low and his thoughts had otherwise been with Scully. He hoped that the long sleep he'd had at the motel was helpful, but now that there was no immediate danger and his partner seemed safe, Mulder focused for the first time on how he was feeling; absolutely hellish.

He bit his lip as Shelly probed the wound with a gloved finger, trying to be gentle. He didn't need to look down to know that the exposed flesh had become infected, but he did anyway, unable to look away while she prodded fresh agony into his side.

The skin around the wound was red and inflamed, hot to the touch. The hole itself was looking better, but only because swelling had pressed the opening shut a little.

Shelly stepped back, reaching for supplies from the cart. "Well, the shot was clean," she said, sincerely grateful that her friend hadn't hit anything vital.

 _Though it is a shame he won't be able to work out those muscles for a while_ , she thought errantly, trying to keep her eyes to herself. _If Dana had any sense she'd be more than partners with this one by now._

"Lucky me," Mulder groaned as she swabbed the hole with antiseptic. He clenched his hands into fists to keep from moving. "It's a good day when your partner's shot to your gut is a _clean one_."

Shelly ignored his remark, knowing that he'd never blame Scully for what happened.

"Unfortunately, it is infected. Not that I'm surprised, with all that time you spent gallivanting around on the road with no proper treatment. It's actually a blessing that it isn't worse." It was as close as she would come to telling him he'd done a good job of tending it himself. Mulder rolled his eyes, but was wordlessly grateful for her attempts to throw his humor back at him to keep his mind off the pain.

"Alright," Shelly said, all business again. "The wound is partially closed, but there's a lot of fluid build up inside that needs to be drained. I'm going to give you a local anesthetic before I reopen it."

Mulder swallowed and nodded, letting his head rest back on the table. This part he did not want to watch for.

He closed his eyes as he felt several tiny stabs around the opening in his side; Shelly using a tiny syringe to inject the local anesthetic. She gave it a minute to work, though by the time she came back with the scalpel, Mulder didn't feel much more numb. He gritted his teeth as she sliced into the tender, reddened flesh of his side. His body wanted badly to flinch away, and almost did, jerking under the knife against his will.

"Hold still!" Shelly said sharply, freezing with the scalpel in his side. "Dana might not have damaged anything vital, but that doesn't mean I won't with you thrashing around like that."

Mulder groaned, forcing his body back down onto the table. "I'm good," he said stiffly, eyes still clenched shut. "Keep going."

After a moment, she did, and Mulder gripped the sides of the table with both hands to hold himself in place.

"Almost there," she promised, and a moment later he bit back a cry as the scalpel punctured the swollen tissue that had filled with blood and pus. He felt a thin trickle itch its way down his side.

"She's gonna hear you," Shelly warned, setting the scalpel down. "Do you want something to bite on? Getting the fluid out is going to be worse."

 _Worse?_ Mulder cursed under his breath. "Yeah, get me a towel or something. I don't want her to hear this."

Shelly went to a drawer near the sink, tossing her bloody gloves before putting on fresh ones and grabbing a sterile hand towel. She rolled the towel into a thick tube and held it out for Mulder to bite down on. He did, then nodded for her to continue.

Grimacing at the unpleasant task, Shelly placed her hands on either side of the wound, pressing deep into his abdomen to force the fluids out. Mulder gripped the sides of the table hard, unable to stop himself from groaning sharply into the improvised gag as hot liquid seeped from the opening and down his side.

XXX

Scully had just closed her eyes- deciding that despite all the time she'd spent in various states of unconsciousness, her body did really need then rest- when she heard a yell from the next room. The voice was unmistakably Mulder's, choked with pain. Her eyes flew open and she sat up quickly in alarm.

Her mind, fresh with paranoia from Mulder's vague account of what they'd been through over the past few days, leapt to thinking that he'd been attacked.

Had they been followed here? Or worse; was Shelly one of them?

 _Trust no one._

Scully looked around for a weapon. For obvious enough reasons, Mulder had not left a gun anywhere within her reach.

Getting out of the bed, she found herself a little dizzy, but otherwise stable. She beelined for the cabinet, finding a drawer with standard medical tools; a scalpel would have to do.

As she crept toward the door, Scully heard her partner groan, more muffled this time. Her heart pounding, she opened the door quickly, keeping the scalpel down at her side.

Once she saw the scene inside, however, Scully stopped abruptly, confused. Nobody was hurting Mulder- not in the sense she'd thought, at least. He lay shirtless on the examination table, fists clenched as Shelly stood over him, doing something to his side. Hearing the door open, she turned, and Scully gaped at the blood oozing from a small hole in her partner's side. A bullet hole. She quickly put the pieces together.

Having noticed the absence of pressure on his wound, Mulder looked up. When he saw her standing there, wide-eyed and alarmed, he spat the towel out and pushed himself up onto his elbows with a wince.

"Get out of here, Scully," he said roughly, not happy with her for not trusting him and staying put.

"You said I didn't hurt anyone," she accused, distraught.

Deciding to ignore their conversation, Shelly grabbed a clean towel and began to clear the blood from around the wound. Mulder winced as she dabbed at the open flesh.

"No, I said you didn't _kill_ anyone," he said pointedly, forcing the pain from his face and raising his eyebrows in an attempt to lighten the mood.

" 'But you certainly tried'..." she quoted back to him, horrified.

Mulder sighed, knowing how truly upset she was. "I'm going to be fine, Scully. Please go rest. Shelly will fix me up then we can talk."

"Actually, the hard part is over," Shelly said, wiping the last of the blood Mulder's side. "All that's left is a few stitches. You might as well let her stay."

Mulder gave the doctor a dark, exasperated look, but consented to lie back down while Scully pulled a chair up on the other side of the table. Wordlessly, she took his hand in both of hers, rubbing his palm anxiously while trying not to think of the fact that she'd shot her partner.

Mulder closed his eyes, soothed by her gesture. Dr. Hilton was right; the worst was over. Though the wound was still sore from the procedure, the release of pressure in his infected tissues had relieved much of the pain. The pricks of the needle as Shelly stitched the hole closed were barely more than mosquito bites. When she was done, she wiped the area with antiseptic and had Mulder sit up so she could apply a fresh bandage.

"I'll see about finding you something to wear," she said quietly before slipping out to give the two agents some privacy.

He'd never felt the need to be overly modest around his partner, even suspecting that she may have secretly enjoyed the glimpses she'd seen of his unclothed form, but now Mulder wanted nothing more than to put a shirt on so she'd stop staring at the spot where tiny dots of fresh blood were creeping through the front of the bandage.

"Scully," he started, trying to get her to meet his eyes. When she did he saw that hers were still pained and upset- even even a little scared.

"I shot you," she said before he could continue. Her voice was harsh with dibelief.

Mulder couldn't help but laugh. "Hey, it wouldn't be the first time."

"Mulder, stop…"

He hopped down off the table, pulling her up out of the chair and into his arms. She held him tightly, tucking her head under his chin.

"Hey," he said softly. "Really, I'm going to be fine. And you know why?"

"Why?"

"You didn't miss, Scully," he said quietly into her hair. "You were feet away from me when you pulled the trigger. The only reason I'm not dead is because somehow you fought through it at the last second. They tried to make you kill me, but you wouldn't let them."

Scully pushed back far enough to look up into his eyes, keeping her arms around his waist. She could see the earnestness in his gaze and knew he was telling the truth. Medically, she could tell that he would be fine, but it didn't do much to assuage her guilt.

Mulder gave her a playful smile, nodding to the small tool she'd set down on the table beside her.

"So you were going to save me with a scalpel, huh?"

Scully cracked a smile, appreciating his effort to cheer her up. "Don't think I could?" she challenged.

Mulder chuckled. "No, of that I have no doubt. Some of the things you said to me when you were drugged sent chills down my spine."

Scully winced at that, becoming serious again.

"I...I heard you scream, and thought….I don't know what I thought, Mulder. That you'd made a mistake by bringing us here, that Shelly had turned on us…." she closed her eyes, cringing as she recalled her state of mind. "God, I was going to attack one of my oldest friends with a scalpel."

Mulder pulled her back to his chest, rubbing her back soothingly.

"Your heart was in the right place, Scully. It's so hard to know who we can trust. But Dr. Hilton has been wonderful. She saved your life, I'm sure of it. Yes, there was a risk in coming here, but the risk was far greater that you'd have been killed on the road with me, and I was not about to let that happen."

He held her tighter, overwhelmed by the thought. "I was so worried, Scully. I didn't know what to do."

They stood that way for a long minute, their breaths eventually falling in sync. Finally Scully said, "What do we do now?"

Mulder gave a light chuckle. "Well, now that I'm not running on pure adrenaline, I could really use a sandwich," he said. "The last thing either of us ate was terrible chinese takeout a day and a half ago. Let's see if Shelly can hook us up with some real food. After that we can figure out the plan."

He pushed back from her, signalling that their moment was over. Scully gave him a half-smile and followed him back into the other room.


	14. Chapter 14

A half hour after Mulder's wound had been tended to, the three of them sat around a table in Scully's room, Mulder ravenously devouring a sub sandwich from the hospital kitchen, Scully picking at a bowl of microwaved ravioli, and Dr. Hilton sipping a black coffee.

The agents were dressed in fresh clothes that Shelly had been able to scrounge up; a simple v-neck to replace Mulder's bloodied button down and scrubs for Scully.

For a while they sat in silence, the first real moment of peace Mulder or Scully had had in days. Shelly watched them both thoughtfully. After a moment, she broke the comfortable silence.

"I'm not sure what your plans were, but I want you both to stay here tonight."

Mulder glanced sideways at his partner, then nodded. "I think that's a good idea," he said between chews. "Just in case anything else...comes up. Besides, it's late. I still don't feel safe going home, not until we have our evidence together to come at them with."

Scully sighed. "As much as I hate to say it, you're both right. In the morning I'd like to look at the blood samples you took."

"Of course," Shelly said. "I'm going to stay overnight as well, just in case you need me." When Scully opened her mouth to protest, she cut her off. "Don't try to argue, Dana. You know you've been through a terrible ordeal, and one that neither of us knows much about. Besides, like your partner said, it's late. Even with a regular patient I'd be staying out of convenience."

Again, Scully sighed, nodding her consent.

When they'd finished eating, Shelly showed the agents where they could find extra blankets for their respective beds. The room adjacent to Scully's didn't have a bathroom, so Mulder would have to come into her room if he needed to relieve himself in the night. He cracked a bad joke at this, but was secretly glad for an excuse to check on her throughout the night.

By the time Shelly bid them goodnight, promising to be in her office just down the hall if they needed anything, it was almost 1:00.

As Scully started to climb back into the hospital bed, Mulder made his way to the door that connected their rooms. With his hand on the doorknob, he turned.

"It's good to have you back, Scully."

She gave him a small smile. "Goodnight, Mulder."

XXX

1:20 AM

In a cluttered, poorly-lit room back in the greater DC area, three men huddled together around a computer, their anxious faces illuminated by the dull bluish glow from the monitor. For a while, the only sound was the clicking of keys as the man in the center typed furiously, navigating the elaborate labyrinth of code with a grimace of concentration.

Finally, John Byers grinned triumphantly. "I'm in!"

Frohike and Langly leaned in a little closer. "What is it exactly that we're looking for?" Frohike asked sullenly as a massive stream of data flooded the screen.

"Not sure, but Mulder gave me a time window to check security camera footage. Said we'd know the winner when we see it." Byers expertly sifted through Pallister's private network, knowing they had a limited amount of time before someone noticed the breach and started throwing up firewalls.

"Here we go, starting at 8:00 pm. I'm going to put it on double speed so we're not here all night. I don't know the details but I think we can safely assume Mulder needs this yesterday."

Langly scoffed. "Doesn't he always?"

"Hey, pay attention. It's a lot of screens." There were at least a dozen different camera feeds playing simultaneously.

Frohike nodded his agreement, leaning close to watch for clues.

The three men fell silent and serious, turning their full attention to the hacked video feeds. At double speed, it only took them a few minutes to come to the moment when Scully had broken into the first warehouse. There hadn't been any cameras inside that one, but a motion-triggered camera mounted under the eaves of the laboratory building next to it had tracked her movements. She appeared on the screen only briefly before slipping out of the camera's range, but Langly caught it.

"Wait, wait, wait," he said quickly, pointing to the feed in the bottom left corner of the screen. "Can you back it up? I think I just saw Scully."

Byers typed in a command and the feed zoomed backward for a few seconds, pausing on an overhead view on their friend's female partner.

"That's her alright," Frohike confirmed as Byers restarted the feed at normal speed this time. "Let's see where she went next."

In bits and pieces, they saw Scully make her way across the path of several hidden cameras as she slipped stealthily from the first warehouse and into the second, which contained the secret lab. Once inside the lab, her image showed up on four different feeds, a camera in each corner of the room recording her unlawful entry. Sensing this was the point that Mulder had directed them to, Byers quickly rigged the feed to start recording onto a tape in his computer.

The Lone Gunmen watched silently as Scully picked her way quickly through the lab, pocketing evidence here and there before trying to slip back out. They shared an uneasy glance as she found herself faced with three men in lab coats.

"Oh, shit," Langly said as Darryl Hunt entered the frame, holding a gun to Scully's head.

"You recording this, Byers?" Frohike asked, eyes glued to the screen.

"Yep."

On the four tiny screens, Scully and the doctors conversed soundlessly for a moment before two of them grabbed her arms and forced her down into a chair, tying her there with something.

"This is starting to look bad for Scully…" Byers muttered.

"Did Mulder say anything about her when you spoke?" Frohike asked, his voice concerned. "Is she okay?"

Byers shook his head. "He didn't mention."

They fell silent again, watching as Hunt paced back and forth in front of the chair Scully was bound to, no doubt rubbing it in her face that she'd come so close to the truth but had been caught.

"Oh, no…" Byers said as the two men held Scully still, Hunt coming at her with what could only be a syringe.

The Gunmen exchanged a horrified glance.

"Do you think that was….?" Langly trailed off, knowing the answer already.

"We've got to find Mulder and get this to him," Frohike muttered determinedly, starting to pace.

"How? It's the middle of the night and we have no idea where he is. Chances are they're being tracked by these people as we speak, so trying to contact him could endanger them both."

Byers stood, ejecting the tape and pocketing it before turning to his squabbling comrades.

"There's one other person who might know where Mulder and Scully are. The only other person they'd trust."

XXX

2:07 AM

At a short rap on the door, Frohike hastened to unlock it, fumbling through the deadbolts as he heard an impatient sigh from the other side. When the door swung open, Walter Skinner brushed past him into the room, turning to face all three Gunmen with a look of mixed concern and annoyance.

"Alright, what have you got?" he demanded, dismissing any notion of preamble at this time of night. On the phone, Byers had said nothing more than that they had important information about the missing agents, which could not be discussed via telephone.

Byers motioned for the Assistant Director to follow him over to the computer monitor, where he slipped the tape in and played its footage. "Mulder contacted us a few hours ago, asking me to hack Pallister's security mainframe. He didn't quite know what we were looking for, but he had an idea of when to look, so that tells us that Scully is still incoherent or unable to recall her experiences. Obviously, this is hard evidence of what was done to her. With this tape, we could bring the whole operation down."

Skinner stared at the screen, contemplating Byers' words. He grimaced as the tape progressed to Scully being injected, then turned to look at Byers.

"Not yet," he said cautiously, knowing he had to think the way that Mulder would. "If they do have a man inside, which I'm almost certain of, this could disappear just like the rest of the evidence if we made its existence known prematurely. I have to get to Mulder and find out his and Scully's conditions, and whether or not they've discovered anything new that might give us a sense of how these people operate."

He held his hand out for the tape. Byers ejected it and set it in Skinner's hand, knowing what he said was true. He only hoped that Mulder's superior would be as smart with the precious evidence as he said.

"You know where they are, then?" Frohike prodded. Skinner nodded.

"They're in a safe place, at least for now. I'll go straight to them with this in the morning."

The Assistant Director turned to leave. "Good work, you guys," he muttered, nodding to them before slipping back out into the night.

XXX

2:54 A.M.

Scully was dragged suddenly and violently up from the depths of her sleep by an overwhelming wave of nausea. Struggling to choke back the rising bile in her throat, she flew from the bed, making it as far as the bathroom sink before the meager contents of her stomach spewed forth, her body seizing painfully as she wretched.

After a few minutes, the spell was over. Scully straightened up weakly and, gasping for breath, ran the water to wash the putrid emesis down the drain.

As she waited for her heart rate to return to normal, Scully observed herself in the mirror. Her skin had retaken its pale, clammy appearance, strands of hair sticking to the sweat that had broken out on her forehead. Her eyes were hollow looking, with pupils that were far too dilated.

Trying not to be concerned, she looked back down at the sink, taking a minute to time her heartbeats. Instead of getting stronger and more regular, they were flitting about weakly and noncommittally, adding to the overall shakiness that she felt.

 _It's probably nothing_ , she thought, starting to make her way back to the bed. _I just need to lie back down and rest._

She had almost made it back to the bed when a piercing pain began to rise from a point above her left temple, as if a nail was slowly being driven into her skull. Gasping, she clutched her head, shutting her eyes against the pain until it subsided slightly.

 _What is happening to me?_ she thought in a panic. When she felt stable enough to open her eyes, she went quickly to the door to Mulder's room, knocking twice before letting herself in. He sat up in bed almost immediately, all sleepiness gone from his face when he saw her small form shaking almost violently in the doorway.

"Scully, what's wrong?" He threw back the covers and crossed the room in a few quick strides, alarmed by how pale she was.

Scully looked up at her partner, her eyes rolling and fluttering slightly. "I feel…..really weird," she forced out, feeling as though she was being swallowed by quicksand. "Mulder…..ah!"

Scully let out a sharp cry of pain, her hands flying to her head as the splitting pain returned, driving white-hot daggers into her skull. She clenched her teeth, another scream forcing its way out as the agony in her head became too intense.

"SCULLY!" Mulder darted forward as she fell, his arms enveloping her before she could hit the ground. Her eyes rolled listlessly for another second before fluttering closed, her last cry of pain still on her lips as she lost consciousness.

"Scully! Scully?!" Panicked when she didn't stir or respond, Mulder's hand went to her throat, feeling nothing for a few heartstopping moments before her pulse, weak and erratic, beat against his fingertips.

Quickly, Mulder scooped his partner up into his arms, rushing back through the door to set her down on the hospital bed. The he bolted for the door, running down the hall to Dr. Hilton's office.

"Dr. Hilton!" He yelled as he burst in the door. "Shelly!" She had been dozing in a chair, some medical report or another still open on her lap, but sat up in confused alarm at his voice.

Seeing the terrified helplessness on Mulder's face, she got up quickly and followed him from the room without a word. Upon entering the room, she went quickly to Scully's side, taking her pulse and temperature, then lifting her eyelids to inspect the pupils with a small flashlight. "Dana," she said, her face inches from Scully's. "Dana, can you hear me?"

Scully's motionless form gave no response. Shelly turned back to Mulder. "What happened?" she asked sharply, clearly at a loss.

"She- she came into my room, shaking like a leaf," Mulder stammered, feeling a little shaky himself. "Said she felt weird. Her eyes were unfocused, and she seemed to be having a hard time articulating. All of a sudden, she grabbed her head and screamed, then collapsed right there in my arms."

He stared at her, at a loss for words. It had all happened so fast.

"What is this, Shelly?" he demanded, trying to keep his voice steady. "What's happening to her?"

"I don't know, dammit!" she yelled, punching the mattress in frustration. After a moment, she took a deep breath to calm herself. "I won't know how to help her until we can figure out what caused this. I'm going to take another blood sample to analyze. If nothing comes up there I'll take her down for x-rays and an EEG."

"What can I do?"

When she met his eyes, he saw that hers were full of pity. "Nothing."

Stunned, Mulder sank back down into the chair, putting his head in his hands. After a moment he sat up, taking Scully's hand in his and pressing it to his lips. His heart ached with concern.

For a while Shelly came and went, though Mulder paid little attention to her actions. Finally she planted herself in front of him, forcing him to look up at her.

"I've done all that can be done for tonight," she said resolutely. "I don't know what will happen now but you certainly can't do anything for her. Go back to sleep, Agent Mulder."

Mulder shook his head wearily. "I'll stay here. If she gets worse I want to be able to let you know immediately."

Shelly's eyes narrowed but in the end she turned without another word and left. Once again Mulder was alone with his unconscious partner, trying hard not to wonder whether or not he'd ever see her eyes open again.

He managed to stay awake longer this time, but still caved into sleep, his head tipping forward until his chin almost touched his chest.

It was nearly 5:00 am when the door clicked quietly open, a tiny sound to which neither agent stirred. The intruder moved slowly, letting the door fall not quite closed so that it wouldn't click a second time, then strode silently to the bed, quietly regarding the small, unconscious redhead before moving over to the chair where her partner slept. Quietly drawing a pistol from his jacket pocket, he pressed it to the sleeping man's temple.


	15. Chapter 15

Despite his physical exhaustion and lack of proper rest over the past several days, Mulder slept lightly, aware even in his unconscious mind that Scully's condition might change and that they were both still very much in danger.

When the cold metal of the gun pressed to his skin, Mulder woke instantly, experiencing a brief moment of groggy confusion before a hollow sense of realization settled in the pit of his stomach.

"Slowly, now, Agent Mulder," an unfamiliar voice breathed from behind him. "I just want to talk. Perhaps we'd best step out into the hall, so as not to wake your lovely partner."

Mulder's eyes flashed to Scully, who still appeared to be unconscious beside him. Her chest rose and fell gently, indicating no change in her condition.

"Don't worry, I haven't touched her," the voice spoke, its owner having seen his panicked look. "Stand up slowly."

Mulder did as he was bid, cursing himself for not wearing his weapon as he slept. Not that it would have made a difference; the man had snuck in right under his nose.

When he was standing, he heard the other man move around the chair behind him, and after a brief moment away the gun resumed contact at the back of his skull. With his other hand the man grabbed Mulder's shoulder, holding him tightly against the muzzle of the firearm.

"Walk forward to the door, then open it slowly. Try to turn and hit me or run down the hall and I'll shoot you. Afterwards I'll shoot her, because then this whole mess will be unsalvageable anyway."

After stealing another furtive glance at Scully, Mulder obeyed. When they were in the hall, the man spun Mulder around to face him.

"Who are you?" Mulder demanded as soon as the door had shut behind them. He didn't recognize the man, but he was clearly familiar with them. Mulder suddenly wondered if they'd been watched the whole time they were at the hospital.

"Call me Richard," the man said calmly. "I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Scully the other day. I must say it's very unfortunate the way things turned out."

Mulder's eyes narrowed. "Dr. Brontman." It wasn't a question. "What do you want with me?"

"Believe it or not, I want to help you," Brontman said. "When your partner first walked into my office, I was quite taken with her. I'd never wish her fate on such a beautiful and intelligent woman. If it had been up to me, I'd have confiscated the evidence and released her that night. My superiors, however, are ruthless men. It's why they've been able to accomplish so much in such a short time."

"What do you mean, 'her fate'?" Mulder demanded, clenching his fists at his sides to keep from lunging at the man. "What's happening to her?"

Brontman held a finger to his lips, indicating that Mulder's voice was starting to rise too much.

"The drug she was given was an advancement on the variation you were investigating. You've figured as much out already, so I have no qualms in telling you. As you suspected, the substance causes its victim to enter a trance-like state, reverting, at exposure to certain stimuli, to a series of directives implanted by whomever has administered it. Hallucinations and extreme paranoia help the subject arrive at the point of whatever it is we've told them to do. Agent Scully, however, was given a new variation of the drug which, before her, was untested. Because the men who inflicted this on her were uncertain how the new strain would work, it was coded with a virtually undetectable neurotoxin as a safety net. It will kill her within 48 hours if not treated."

The hollow feeling in Mulder's stomach intensified, twisting his gut into an anxious knot.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I am one of four people with access to the antidote. And the other three are less sympathetic to Agent Scully's condition; in fact, on their orders I am supposed to be figuring out why the pair of you aren't dead yet, so that they might remedy the situation. If you want her to live, I'm the only one who can help you."

Mulder ground his teeth. He could see where this was going. "At what cost?"

Brontman at least had the courtesy to look slightly ashamed. "I'm sure you think I'm a terrible person...and you're right at least in the sense that my motives are selfish-"

"Cut the crap, Brontman, and tell me what you want from me!" Mulder's voice was rising again. Brontman fixed him with a steely gaze, all pretense aside now.

"We've cleaned up all the incriminating evidence, as usual, but it seems that you've still got something of significance. You'll give me the stolen security tapes in exchange for the antidote. The last traces of the drug will be gone from Agent Scully's system completely in another couple hours, and without those tapes, you'll have no case against us. With them, you could destroy my career. Ruin everything we've accomplished. Send us all to prison. Untreated, Dana Scully will die a rather miserable death. Do I make my meaning clear?"

Mulder's heart sank further. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said defiantly. "I've been on the run ever since I pulled Scully out of that warehouse. I don't have any security tapes."

Brontman's eyes narrowed. "Don't play dumb with me, Agent Mulder," he said darkly. "Several hours ago our security mainframe experienced a glitch, or so it would appear to the unsuspecting eye. I knew it was a breach. I couldn't trace the hacker, but given the timing I know what they took. I've since erased the original footage, so whatever copy you have floating around is the only hard evidence to link me to any of this. If you don't get it for me by 6:00 Tuesday evening, Scully is dead."

Unable to stop himself, Mulder lashed out, grabbing Brontman by the wrist and twisting to the side, a standard disarming maneuver. Brontman, however, seemed ready for this and kept a solid grip on his gun, twisting with Mulder and driving a hard elbow into his side, hitting the still-tender bullet wound with all his force. Mulder groaned sharply, doubling over. Brontman's wrist was yanked from his grip and Mulder swung wildly, connecting with the other man's jaw with a harsh crunch. Before he could regroup and go for the gun again, it crashed against the side of his skull, sending an agonizing burst of white light across the inside of his eyelids. As Mulder recovered his senses, Brontman twisted his arm behind his back, pressing him face-first against the wall and jamming the gun against his temple once more.

"I thought you'd be smarter than that," Brontman hissed over his shoulder. "You're lucky I'm not as trigger-happy a man as some. Two bullets in as many days….as annoyingly persistent as you are, even you wouldn't be lucky enough to have another near miss." He pressed Mulder roughly against the wall to emphasize his point, then nodded toward the room. "And who would protect her then?"

Knowing that Brontman was right on all counts, Mulder stopped struggling. He could feel a thin trickle of blood working its way down his forehead from the blow, but hardly registered the pain, still seething from Brontman's words.

"You will NOT use her life as a bargaining chip!" Mulder spat, his free fist clenching tightly since it couldn't wrap around the other man's throat.

Before Brontman could respond, a high, droning tone floated dully through the door. It took Mulder a second to understand what he was hearing. Suddenly, the pressure on his arm was gone and the other man stepped away.

"Better go help her, Agent Mulder, or we both lose."

Mulder turned, seeing Brontman walking away down the hall. For a split second, he thought about running after the man, tackling him, wrestling the gun away, and demanding answers. But the high-pitched tone had not stopped.

Mulder whipped around, bursting back into the room. The steady beep of the heart monitor that had comforted him all night had turned into a terrible, piercing drone as a straight line crawled across the screen, flattening the regular peaks and valleys that had been her heartbeat.

"Shelly!" he yelled, hoping desperately that she was near enough to hear him. He ran to Scully's side, frantically jamming the panic button by the side of the bed several times as an added summons to Dr. Hilton. Even if she was just down the hall, the ten seconds it took her to reach them could be ten seconds that Scully didn't have. Without thinking any further, Mulder crossed his hands over his partner's sternum, starting the quick, forceful compressions before tipping her mouth to his, pinching her nose shut and trying to breathe his life into her lungs. After several breaths he resumed compressions, his own heart gripped by icy fingers of panic as he watched the monitor continue flatly.

"Shelly, I need you in here!" he yelled again.

 _Where is she?_

He bent to press his mouth to his partner's again, feeling her chest rise and fall artificially with the force of his exhalation. "Breathe, Scully!" he yelled, pushing determinedly on her chest. "Dammit, Scully, breathe!"

After another few compressions, a jagged spike popped up on the screen, accompanied by a beep from the monitor. Several more followed, and eventually they stabilized into a steady beat. Mulder watched the machines for another minute, terrified that her heart rate would plummet again, but it didn't. Scully's chest rose and fell of its own accord.

"Thank God," he breathed, turning and pacing away for a moment before walking back to the chair and sinking shakily down into it, putting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

A moment later, Shelly burst into the room. "What happened?"

Mulder bolted upright at the sound of the door opening. "I'll tell you in a moment," he said, darting into the other room to grab his gun. "Stay with Scully." She looked at him in bewilderment as he brushed past her and took off running down the hall.

Not taking any chances of being out maneuvered again if he caught up to Brontman, Mulder ran with his gun held down to the side, ready to aim quickly if needed. Following the direction the man had last walked in, he found himself heading through the empty hall to the doors that lead out to the parking lot.

Kicking the door open, Mulder did a sweep of the surrounding area, but saw no one. Only two cars were parked in this section; his Bureau-issue sedan and an SUV that must have been Shelly's. In the darkened lot, there was not even so much as a pair of retreating taillights. Mulder cursed and went back inside.

Back in the room, Mulder paced, pinching the bridge of his nose. Dr. Hilton watched him warily, a little alarmed by his obvious volatility.

"I don't know exactly what happened," Mulder said quickly, the tone of his voice dark. He still couldn't forgive himself for being caught off guard. "But Scully flatlined. I brought her back with CPR."

Mulder glanced anxiously at his partner, unable to bring himself to resume his post in the chair at her bedside.

"Check her, please," he implored the doctor, his face tense. "I need to know she'll be ok for now, because we have a much bigger problem to address."

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Sorry I can't let these two beautiful idiots stay safe and happy for more than a chapter at a time.

Please review! Your feedback keeps me inspired! I'd love to hear what you guys would like to see happen next.

Cheers,

Starkblast


	16. Chapter 16

Sorry for the long wait on this chapter! Had to work a lot this week. Also Thanksgiving happened.

Feedback, please!

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"Check her," Mulder commanded again, gesturing to his unconscious partner. The threats he'd just heard against her life ran through his head, Richard Brontman's words echoing with what could only be the truth. Why else would Scully have declined so rapidly? She'd been awake and coherent, as healthy as she could be under the circumstances just a couple hours ago.

Shelly nodded silently and went about checking Scully's vitals. When she was done, having determined that her patient was stable for the time being, she turned back to Mulder. He was pacing anxiously in the corner, looking less and less stable with each minute that passed.

"So what's our new problem?" she asked cautiously.

Mulder took a deep breath as he turned to her, afraid that by acknowledging Brontman's words and speaking them aloud, he was validating them, making the ticking time bomb he'd spoken of real.

"The man I was just chasing just now….He was one of the men responsible for drugging Scully. He took me out into the hall and held me at gunpoint, trying to make a deal for Scully's life." Mulder met her eyes, desperately hoping she'd be able to help. "He said the drug contained a neurotoxin. If that bastard is telling the truth, it will kill her in less than two days if we can't treat it."

Shelly looked at him evenly, her eyes not betraying her thoughts. "Why would he tell you that if he wants her dead?"

Mulder looked at her for a long moment before he spoke, suddenly wary. "I have evidence that will implicate him in crimes against a federal agent and link him to the murders," he finally said. "He claims to have an antidote for Scully, in exchange for the evidence."

Shelly grimaced. "Well, I'm afraid he may well be telling the truth. It would explain Dana's decline since she woke up, which otherwise had me stumped."

Fighting the urge to start pacing again, Mulder squared with her, fixing her with an intense gaze.

"I know you've barely slept, Shelly, but I need you to go over Scully's blood work again. If you can locate this neurotoxin we may have a chance to treat it without playing the last card in our hand. I can't risk handing over that evidence to a man who may not follow through. I can't risk letting Scully die and having no way to bring the people who did this to her to justice."

Shelly gave a tired sigh, looking down at her friend on the bed. "I'll do my best," she promised before looking back up at Mulder. "But you should be ready to turn that evidence over if I haven't made any progress by this time tomorrow." She paused. "Unless this justice is worth your partner's life."

"Nothing is worth her life," Mulder hissed, taking an aggressive step towards the doctor. "None of it! She wouldn't even be involved in cases like this if it wasn't for me."

Shelly took an alarmed step back.

Mulder took a deep breath to steady himself, aware that he was scaring her.

"If you can't find a cure, I'll be ready to make that deal," he vowed. "But we have to try. There's too much at stake here."

Shelly nodded. "I'll start some more coffee and head back down to the lab. What will you do?"

That part troubled Mulder. He could think of a number of things that he'd like to be doing, but he knew he couldn't leave Scully alone.

"I'm going to see if I can get some help looking after Scully. In the meantime, I'd like to do a little research."

Shelly pointed to a computer on the corner desk. Mulder knew it wasn't likely a secure connection, but the potential answers he might find were worth the risk.

"Thanks," he said, moving over to the desk immediately. "Call me if you find anything."

"I will." She left the room.

When she had gone, Mulder pulled out his cell phone. He knew the device was also traceable, but given the fact that they'd already been found by one of the Pallister scientists, he dialed anyway. The need for backup had grown too desperate to put off anymore.

The line connected after just one ring. "Mulder, I'm on my way to you right now," Skinner said, keeping his words vague and short in case anyone was listening in. "I assume you know why."

"Yes, sir," Mulder answered quickly. "Thank you. See you soon."

The line clicked off and Mulder allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Skinner had the tapes; if Brontman stayed true to their deal, the tapes were the only real way to guarantee Scully's safety. Now he could focus on an alternative approach.

Turning on the computer, Mulder focused on something he'd heard his partner say in the terror of one of her hallucinations. A single word, a surname spat at him as he'd tried to pull a frantic Scully from the car; Hunt.

' _You stay away from me, Hunt!'_ she'd said when he'd reached to unlock her handcuffs. She'd then returned to her delusion that she was back with the Pallister scientists, being dosed with more of the drug. Hunt must have been one of the men present when Scully was first captured. It wasn't much to go on, but if Mulder could find out anything about this man, anything to connect him to the conspiracy, they might be able to make a case even without the security tapes.

Mulder tapped the keyboard impatiently as the search engine sifted through results. After a few strikes on college professors and family practitioners, he came to something that looked promising; Dr. Darryl Hunt, MD. Degrees in pharmacology, psychology, and chemistry. Listed under a different pharmaceutical company, but residing nearer to Pallister headquarters. Mulder copied down the home address he was able to dig up and set it aside.

Confident that he'd found the right Hunt, Mulder dug deeper, using his very limited hacking skills to access records that appeared restricted. Early in his career, Hunt's license had been suspended on account of what were deemed 'dangerous and unethical' experiments performed in his lab. Several years later, after a period of apparent unemployment in the medical and scientific fields, Darryl Hunt resurfaced several states away in a small clinic, his license reapproved with no record of having been under question.

Mulder had seen all these flags a thousand times before while investigating on the X Files. Men or women with certain valuable potential absorbed by secret government-backed research groups, at which point their past misdeeds, suspicious activity, and even the distinguishing details of their identity would be conveniently erased. These men and women operated on a different level than normal scientists or federal employees, serving powerful men with covert agendas who protected them from accountability with the law.

Hunt, Brontman, and their associates were no different, and that would make it nearly impossible to charge them with anything; evidence would continue to disappear, judges and juries would be bought out by the men on top, and the experiments would continue somewhere else in the country, somewhere the X Files wouldn't be able to find them again.

Despite his frustrations and conviction that it was all for naught, Mulder gathered up what information he'd been able to find on Darryl Hunt and printed it out, just in case someone decided to do a little cleanup on the internet.

Mulder was watching the pages stack neatly in the printer tray, deep in thought, when a quiet knock came at the door.

Walter Skinner pushed the door open quietly, catching Mulder's eye before glancing down at the bed.

Mulder stood and walked over to the Assistant Director.

"How is she?" Skinner asked, looking over Scully with concern. He took note of the IV and monitors she was hooked to. "Last time we spoke you said she was awake and doing better."

Mulder sighed, taking his seat next to the bed again. He gazed down at his partner for a moment before speaking.

"Things have gotten…..complicated," he said, looking back up at Skinner. "Do you have the evidence?"

Skinner reached into his jacket pocket, extracting a video tape and holding it out to Mulder.

"Byers hacked it from Pallister's security network. It shows Agent Scully held at gunpoint, forcibly restrained, and injected very clearly against her will with an unknown substance. This with Scully's bloodwork is all we need to bring the whole thing down."

Mulder turned the tape over in his hands, saying nothing.

Skinner looked at him expectantly. He could tell something was wrong. "Mulder?"

"We may not be able to….to use it," Mulder said quietly, still staring at the tape in his hands.

Skinner tensed a bit at this but waited for his agent to continue.

"One of the men from that video found us," Mulder explained, leaning back in the chair to meet the Assistant Director's eyes. "He told me things about Scully's condition, which had worsened unexpectedly in the middle of the night."

Mulder glanced down at his partner, who still appeared to be sleeping deeply.

"If he was telling the truth, there is a neurotoxin in her blood that was coded into the drug they gave her. He knew we'd hacked their system, and demanded this-" Mulder held up the tape "-in exchange for an antidote."

Skinner's heart sank, all sense of confidence at their supposed upper hand vanishing in an instant.

He already had an idea of what the answer to his next question would be.

"And if Scully doesn't get this antidote…?"

Mulder held his gaze, his steely expression a mask over the fear he felt for his partner's life.

"She has forty-eight hours," he said quietly.

Skinner shook his head, refusing to accept defeat so easily. "What do we know about this toxin? Maybe we can get it analyzed by someone at Quantico and they can find some other way to treat it."

Mulder stood, beckoning for the Assistant Director to follow him into the next room so they wouldn't wake Scully as the volume of their conversation increased with their anxieties.

"I've got Dr. Hilton working on that now," Mulder said, once they were through the door. He left it open to hear in case Scully's monitors went off again. "But I think you should try to send a sample to Quantico as well. Try to keep it quiet."

Skinner nodded. "What will you do?"

"I want one of us with Scully at all times, so I'm staying here until that sample is on its way- I don't care how it gets there, but I need you back here within an hour to be with her while I try to track down some more dirt on our mad scientists."

"You don't trust Dr. Hilton to stay with Scully?" Skinner asked, troubled by the thought.

Mulder grimaced. "She's been helpful so far, but I'm not taking any chances. Besides, she's going to be down in the lab for a while. Scully went into cardiac arrest about an hour ago and would have been lost if I hadn't been just outside the door."

"Jesus," Skinner said under his breath, then looked over his agent in a new light. "Mulder, have you slept?" He asked, taking in his disheveled appearance. "What is _your_ condition? I don't want you running around trying to save Scully and getting yourself killed by not having the energy to think straight. I thought you said you needed medical attention."

Mulder waved a hand irritably, trying to brush the questions off.

"I'll be fine," he said impatiently. "I got sleep on and off while we were waiting for Scully to wake up, and then a little bit before her episode earlier. Shelly took care of my injuries."

Skinner's eyes narrowed and he stared at Mulder pointedly, expecting an explanation.

Mulder cringed at his own indiscretion. "Ok, Scully shot me...a little. It wasn't bad. She didn't hit anything vital, and I've since been stitched up."

He saw the exasperated look on his superior's face and continued before Skinner could cut him off. "Look, I know I probably look like hell, but we don't have time for any of this. I'll sleep when these people stop trying to kill me and my partner."

Skinner shook his head, sighing. He knew Mulder was right. "Alright, just...be careful. I'm going to go see if I can find Dr. Hilton about that blood sample. I'll be back once I figure out how to get it to Quantico."

Mulder nodded gratefully and followed him back into Scully's room. When Skinner had gone, shutting the door behind him, Mulder sank back down into the chair by the bed.


	17. Chapter 17

If anyone is still reading, sorry for the long wait. To be honest I almost abandoned this story.

But I found a tiny bit of inspiration that I think will see me through to the end. Again, this ended up way longer than I had planned. If you are still there, let me know by reviewing! It will help me crank out these last few chapters before I feel like quitting again.

Alas, this chapter is more emotional substance than action, but we'll be back to our guns blazin' FBI agents next chapter. We all know Mulder doesn't sit idly by when his Scully is in danger. On that note, enjoy!

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Thinking that maybe Skinner had been right, Mulder tried to will himself to rest while he could, but his eyes just wouldn't close. He'd been staring at a wrinkle in the blanket by Scully's foot for several minutes before he realized that her eyes were open, studying him.

When Mulder came to his senses enough to feel her gaze, he sat up, turning to her with anxious eyes. He must have been seriously deep in thought to have not noticed her consciousness earlier. But then again, he had a lot to think about.

"Mulder," she said softly, hating the way he was looking at her, like she was a miracle for simply breathing; like she might shatter if he spoke too loudly.

He managed a small smile, struggling to hide his distress. "Hey," he said, taking her hand. She looked much better than she had when she'd come to his room, shaking and sweating. It was a small comfort. "How are you feeling?"

Scully ignored the question, knowing it didn't matter how she felt.

"Mulder, I heard you and Skinner talking," she said, her piercing blue eyes boring into his. "I know what's wrong with me."

Mulder broke away from her stare, looking down at her hand instead.

"I didn't want to tell you just yet," he murmured, absently stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. "You've been through so much already...I didn't want to make it worse."

"It doesn't matter now," Scully replied. "I know about the toxin in my blood, and I know that we have very little time to do anything about it. Mulder…." she squeezed his hand, making him look back up at her. "I don't have time for self-pity. And you don't have time to worry about me. We have to focus on the problem at hand. I can work with Shelly to try to synthesize an antidote. I know I can't stop you from following your own leads, but I don't want you doing anything reckless to try to force their hand. And I don't want you trading that evidence unless we have no other option."

Mulder looked at his partner for a long moment. "I won't."

It was the truth, in a way. He'd hang on to that last bargaining chip until he knew he had no better leverage. But if it got close enough Mulder knew he'd abandon all other options and make the deal despite her wishes. It was just too much for him to risk. Even with no guarantee that the other man would come through with an antidote, he'd trade what little advantage they had for a chance to save his partner's life.

"We're going to fix this, Scully," he continued, hoping to distract her from noticing the turn his train of thought had taken. "Whatever this is in your system, we're going to find a way to stop it."

Scully gave him a tired smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She knew the reality of the situation. They were up against some serious odds. She knew how to face death, but that didn't stop the anxiety that gnawed in the pit of her stomach.

Trying to focus on something productive, Scully glanced around the room. "Do I have a chart?"

Mulder nodded, grateful for the distraction, and reached over to hand it to her. Scully flipped through carefully, trying to establish a baseline of information to work from so that she might help Dr. Hilton with an antidote.

Mulder watched her silently, recognizing and admiring the calculating look in her eyes, the determined set of her jaw. Scully was not one to be taken down easily, especially when the cure could be found by means of her familiar scientific methods.

"Dr. Hilton's only been down in the lab for a couple hours, but she may have some new information," Mulder supplied, trying to encourage her. "I'll see if she can send any new findings up here for you to check out."

"No need for that," Shelly said as she strode into the room, another clipboard in hand. "I'm going to keep my research up here for now. How are you feeling, Dana? I'm guessing your partner filled you in about your unique….condition?"

Scully nodded. "I've certainly felt better, but I'm no longer experiencing the head pains or nausea. I'd like to help you work."

Shelly threw her a stern look. "You know as well as I do that you could relapse at any moment, particularly if this thing is triggered by physical activity. I'll welcome any input you can give me from looking over charts in bed."

Scully sighed and looked to Mulder for support, though she wasn't expecting anything other than another stern look, which she got.

"Alright," she sighed. "What do we know so far?"

Shelly flipped through the papers she was holding, frowning down at her findings.

"Not much. I've analyzed the blood sample but won't be able to work on the actual synthesis until I've figured out how our toxin works. It left very little trace, so we're starting at the bottom here."

She handed Scully the clipboard. "I know you've encountered things of this nature in your work. Maybe you'll be able to find something I can't. I'm going to do some research; I'll use the other room so you have access to the computer in here."

Scully thanked her and the doctor left the room for the adjoining one where Mulder had slept for a few short hours the previous night. When she was gone, Mulder stood and went to the computer, gathering up the information he'd printed off on Dr. Hunt.

"What is that?" Scully asked as he came back to the bedside. Mulder studied his partner for a moment. Scully could have valuable information floating just beneath the surface, waiting to be remembered. Information that could save her life. But trying to access it could trigger another episode; not knowing the exact mechanisms of the drug made it dangerous to question her. Could dredging up those memories cause Scully to have another reaction that would wreak havoc on her body, possibly even shortening the time she had left to live? As she stared back at him, her eyes intense, he decided it was worth the risk.

"This," Mulder started, considering the papers he held, well aware of her scrutinizing gaze, "Is all the information I could find on one of the men who may be behind all this. You said his name when you were in the middle of one of your episodes. You thought I was him, and you were terrified of me. It made you flash back, from what I could gather, to whatever happened to you in that warehouse. His name is-"

"Hunt," Scully whispered, her eyes distant. Mulder stared at her. After a moment she shook her head, coming back to reality.

"I don't remember him," she said morosely. "I don't even know how I thought of that name."

Mulder leaned forward, more hopeful now as he held her disappointed gaze.

"But it's there, Scully," he encouraged. "Those memories are just under the surface. And if you can get to them, maybe they can help us."

Scully sat up a little higher in the bed, willing herself to feel more awake, more in control of her own mind. She focused on the details that she did know, but nothing new came to light. Suddenly she had an idea.

"Play the tape, Mulder," she said. "Maybe I can ID Hunt as one of the men who drugged me. Maybe it will help me remember what else happened."

There was a TV on a stand in the corner, and Mulder quickly rolled it over next to the bed. It was small and boxy, outdated; it occurred to him that this room had not been in use for general patient care for some time. Reaching into his pocket for the tape, he slipped it into the VCR and let it play.

It was the first time Mulder had seen the footage; though he'd known what it was they would see, he wasn't prepared for the way it made his blood boil.

His fists clenched and he watched tensely as on-screen Scully struggled, her face contorting in panic and desperation as they tied her down. Out of the corner of his eye he watched his partner for a reaction; her face grew pale as she witnessed the events she had no memory of, but she stared determinedly at the screen through the remainder of the tape. When Mulder dashed into the frame, dropping to his knees in front of her barely-conscious figure, the screen froze and went black.

For a moment neither of them spoke, both roiling with renewed anger at what had been done to them.

When she finally turned to him, the furious gleam in her eyes and the tense set of her jaw only made him feel worse.

"Scully…."

"I'm fine, Mulder," she cut him off, her words short lest she crack and show her true emotions. "Play it again. There are things that came back to me, just a little. I think I can tell you some of what I found."

Mulder held her gaze for another moment before sighing and doing as she asked.

"There," Scully said, pointing as her security camera self pocketed a piece of paper. "I found a chart on Ray Miller. And dozens of others. They all catalogued which drug was administered, the dosage, and whether or not the 'directive' had been accomplished. Most of the subjects were listed as deceased."

Mulder remained silent, letting her focus. Her brow furrowed again as the next few minutes of tape passed without another recollection. When the first three men stepped into the frame, she pointed out Brontman.

"It was him who came to see us last night," Mulder murmured as she pointed his blurry figure out on the screen. Throughout the video, he looked incredibly uncomfortable at the position he'd found himself in. Maybe he really did want to help Scully.

When the fourth man entered the scene, Scully's hand darted forward to pause it. His arm was halfway raised, the gun it held on level with her chest.

"That's Hunt," she said. "He was the one in charge. I remember him saying…...that I was a part of his work now. And that he wanted you to find me."

Mulder nodded grimly. "So that once the drug kicked in, you'd take us both out of the picture for him."

Scully considered this, still unable to believe that she'd tried to kill him. "I wonder why it didn't work," she mused, looking to her partner for his theory. Mulder smiled slightly at her glance before becoming sober again. He'd given the question a fair amount of thought already.

"Well, I think it was a number of things. Your skeptical nature and previous knowledge of the drug may have leant you the reason, unconsciously, to see through the trickery and know that some of the things you were experiencing weren't real. It's possible that because of the work that we do and your analytical approach to these types of things, you may have been less susceptible to suggestion than some of the other victims."

From a scientific point of view, it made the most sense; it was the kind of theory that Scully would believe in. She waited, knowing that he would have a second theory which leaned more towards his beliefs.

Sensing her anticipation, Mulder continued.

"What I believe happened is much more simple: they picked the wrong people to pit against one another. All of the other murders were committed by men or women with no apparent connection to their victims. With the drug stimulating the fear centers of the brain, the hallucinations would easily have convinced those people to murder, most likely thinking they were acting in self defense. I think that even though the drug affected you in the same way, creating fear, paranoia, confusion- your emotional connection to me made you process these things differently. The fact that one of the fears that was triggered in you was the fear that _I_ was in danger directly contradicted the impulse to harm me yourself. Even though in your hallucinations you saw me as another man, there was a subconscious part that knew it was me."

"In short, I couldn't kill you because I care about you," Scully said quietly. "My emotional response overrode my reaction to the drug's influence."

Mulder nodded. "I don't think they'd developed a way to get past that natural protective instinct we all have for our loved ones. I think Hunt may have suspected it wouldn't work, which is why you were also, effectively, poisoned."

Scully was quiet for a moment before her face shifted into a confused frown. "But after I shot you, there'd have been no unanticipated mental response, nothing else to set me apart from all the others." She was shaking her head unconsciously. "The impulse for self-preservation obviously wasn't that difficult of a thought to subdue, because all of the other shooters killed themselves as well. If your theory was correct, I'd still have shot myself."

Mulder stared into her eyes, his expression pained. "You would have, Scully."

Scully held his gaze, her mouth falling open slightly.

"The moments after you shot me are a little fuzzy, but at first I thought you were going to finish me off. I was going to try to wrestle you for the gun, but then you put it to your own head….I tackled you before you could fire."

Scully was speechless for a moment.

Mulder lowered his gaze, simultaneously humbled and upset that his partner had fought so desperately not to kill him, but had turned the gun on herself without so much as a single word. He could tell that she was having a hard time processing it too.

Before either of them could speak again, the door opened once more and Skinner walked in.

"Agent Scully, it's good to see you awake," he said stiffly, obviously trying to pretend he didn't know she was in mortal danger. He glanced at Mulder, who gave a slight nod to signify that she already knew the seriousness of the situation. Skinner relaxed a little, turning back to Scully. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay for the moment, Sir," she responded honestly. "But I'll feel better when we can get to work on figuring this thing out. I'm done being someone's lab rat."

"I'm here to help with that in any way that I can," Skinner said, turning his gaze from Scully to Mulder. "That blood sample is on it's way to the lab. If we can't find anything here, hopefully they can."

"Good," Mulder nodded. "I'm going to go follow up a couple of other leads. I'll try to keep in touch but no matter what happens you guys have to try to figure this thing out. Brontman's cure is no guarantee." He felt his partner's eyes on him and turned back to her.

Sensing that his part in the conversation was over, Skinner muttered something about helping Dr. Hilton and retreated to the adjoining room.

Scully's eyes were apprehensive when they met his, knowing she wasn't going to like his plan very much. Mulder gave her half a smile before continuing.

"Skinner's going to stay here with you until I get back. He can assist you and Shelly in any way you need."

She gave him a look, knowing that their superior agent was not there to play lab assistant. "Mulder, I don't need a bodyguard," she said stubbornly. "I appreciate Skinner coming to help us, but I think he'd be of more use with you."

Mulder shook his head. "Scully, you have no idea how this thing is affecting you. Last night you seemed fine, and then suddenly you just collapsed. Your heart stopped. For all we know, that could happen again at any moment, and if it does I want someone here that I can trust to help you."

"Shelly will be here with me. She's a doctor, Mulder. I'll be fine."

"No," he said firmly. "Shelly's going to be busy trying to find a cure for you. She might not be in the room when something happens. And what if you fall unconscious and another one of our friends shows up? She can't help you against men with guns, Scully."

He reached down and unclipped his ankle holster; ever since the incident with Richard Brontman, Mulder had been wearing both his firearms around the clock.

"I want you to keep this under your pillow," he said, pressing the gun into Scully's hands. "Just in case someone does come calling. If they get wind that we're working on an antidote, they may just decide to finish this the old-fashioned way. I can't take that chance, Scully."

Scully held his gaze a moment longer, unable to argue when that look was in his eyes. The look that told her just how rapidly he'd self-destruct if anything were to happen to her. Seeing her melt just enough to cave to his wishes, Mulder cracked a tiny smile. Scully sighed and took the weapon, concealing it beneath the pillows that propped her up.

"You still have yours?" she asked somewhat sullenly, showing him that he wasn't the only one who was allowed to be concerned. She wouldn't have her partner running off on a dangerous mission unarmed. Mulder's grin widened as he patted the firearm at his side.

Scully tried to return his smile but couldn't. "When will you be back?"

"As soon as I can," he replied, serious again. "If you and Shelly don't come up with a cure, I'll track down Brontman and his antidote and be back with plenty of time to spare."

Scully reached for his hand, and for a moment they simply stared at one another, each trying not to wonder if this would be the last time they'd see the other alive. After a minute Mulder stood and walked to the door.

"Be careful, Mulder," Scully said as he turned back to look at her before slipping out the door.

"You too, Scully."


	18. Chapter 18

Merry Christmas everyone! Between bizarre family encounters and heavily drinking, I managed to squeeze out another chapter. Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed last week - its good to know so many of you are still reading :) Enjoy!

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8:50 a.m.

As soon as Mulder's back was to the hospital room door, long strides carrying him swiftly out to the parking lot, his internal clock started ticking.

Forty-eight hours.

The number had been tossed almost casually at him by Richard Brontman, and that had been over three hours ago. Allowing a few extra hours for error in the doctor's calculation and another few for Mulder's refusal to cut it too close, and he had about 36 hours to figure out how to get ahold of the antidote and get it back to Scully. Preferably without having to give up the security tape. Brontman's deadline for the trade was 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, which was even sooner, giving them only 33 hours.

As he get in the driver's seat and started his car, Mulder took a deep breath. As usual, Scully had been right; they didn't have time for him to let his emotions get in the way. If they were going to find a way to save her, he had to keep a clear and level head.

 _Level head. Rational thinking_ , Mulder mentally repeated to himself as he pulled onto the highway. His fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel. Another deep breath. _Save your anger for later._ _Focus._

It worked to a degree, and for the rest of the drive he went over the details still fresh in his mind from the hastily-assembled file on Darryl Hunt. Something in Hunt's shady past practices would be the key, he just needed to dig a little further to find it. And for that, he needed help.

10:04 a.m.

After a minute of clanking deadbolts, Frohike answered the door in rumpled flannel pajamas and a good-natured scowl.

"Mulder, you realize that for those of us who don't conform to schedules of government employment, this is _kind of early_?"

Mulder pushed his way into the cluttered quarters of the Lone Gunmen, shutting the door behind him. Across the room, Langly was curled up sideways in a dilapidated recliner, nursing a bowl of Bran Flakes. The whole scene made Mulder feel oddly like the parent of a couple of pre-teen boys.

"Where's Byers?"

"He went out for coffee," Langly said between slurps. "Finished off the last bag last night trying to track down information on these guys that messed with Scully."

Frohike turned back to Mulder, his face now serious and etched with concern. "How is she? We barely had any idea what's happened to the two of you these past few days, and then you ask us to hack some video of her getting drugged up by a bunch of mad scientists in some creepy warehouse lab. Why didn't you fill us in? I thought you trusted us more than this, Mulder,"

Mulder sighed, leaning against the counter.

"Of course I trust you guys," he scoffed, giving Frohike a look that told him he was being unreasonable. "You're the only ones I have left to trust. I've barely even had the chance to catch Scully up on what happened to her, let alone start making calls to the rest of the troops. Besides, we were being watched. Phones were probably tapped as well."

Langly got up to join them, and before Mulder could continue, the third member of the Lone Gunmen came through the door with a paper grocery bag tucked under one arm. Unlike his scruffier counterparts, Byers was already put together in his usual business attire; despite no longer being employed by the government, he continued to dress the part. He looked relieved but entirely unsurprised to see Mulder standing there.

"Start the coffee, Byers, we're going to need it," Mulder sighed, and after a moment the last of the trio came to complete the semicircle his friends had made around Mulder, waiting expectantly for the story.

"I'm going to give you the short version because we're very low on time at the moment. Scully's life is still in danger."

Quickly he told of their findings, of Scully breaking into the lab and what she thought she'd found there. He told them of Scully's symptoms throughout the ordeal, and of her delusional episodes; trying to kill him, thinking he was Hunt, waking up with amnesia. The three men listened intently, frowning when Mulder described his partner's collapse and degradation at the hospital, culminating in his confrontation with Brontman and finding out about the neurotoxin.

When he was finished, Mulder produced the folder he was carrying, which contained a copy of Scully's blood work, her charts, and the information on Dr. Hunt.

"This is all we have to work with," he said as he set the folder on the table. The three men moved in simultaneously, Langly and Byers reading with furrowed brows over Frohike's shoulder.

"We'll definitely take a closer look at Scully's blood work," Byers said, sounding confident. Frohike handed the paper back to him and he retreated to a desk in the corner, Langly following. Frohike held on to the information on Hunt, reading silently for a few more minutes before looking up at Mulder.

"Looks like you've got enough to track this guy down. Why not just send a SWAT team in to pick him up? Catch him in his lab and you might be able to find more information on Scully's toxin."

Mulder shook his head. "No, Brontman said they'd already cleaned up, and I believe him. They've got a guy on the inside, so if they got wind ahead of time that we were coming, it could ruin any hope of getting our hands on the antidote."

He sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes in tired frustration.

"From what I found and from what I gathered from Scully, this guy Hunt is most likely the one who engineered the toxin. He's also part of the team responsible for the mind-control drug, and will do anything to protect their work. The only thing we can do is keep covertly looking for a cure and hope he doesn't know that Brontman told me about the toxin. If he finds out, he may try to destroy the antidote before we can get our hands on it."

Frohike nodded grimly, not surprised by any of this. "Alright, Mulder, let's get to work. I may be able to dig up a little more dirt on this guy."

As they sat down together at another computer desk, Frohike turned to look at his FBI friend, who was staring solemnly down at the folder in his hands.

"Hey," he said empathetically. "We're going to figure something out. Scully's gonna be fine."

Mulder looked back at him tiredly, then managed a small, grateful smile. "I hope so. Come on, Frohike, let's get to work."

XXX

1:34 p.m.

For hours, Dana Scully had been poring over a thick book on synthetic chemistry. Even for her, a doctor and scientific-minded intellectual, it was tiresome and mind-numbing work.

Shelly had had no luck in the lab; separating the toxin from the other elements in Scully's blood had proven nearly impossible. She'd brought up the results on the final product- a very impure sample- and was sitting at a table in the corner, studying the charts with a frustrated scowl.

"I still can't think of any reason that the toxin wouldn't isolate," she muttered, not to anyone in particular. Several yards away, Skinner sat at the computer, scrolling through an online toxicology database. "If the drug is still active- which it is, or you'd be dead- it should be easy enough to isolate and extract from the blood. I don't understand why I can't get a clean sample."

Skinner looked up momentarily, then decided against saying anything and ducked his head back to the screen. Scully sighed, feeling the same frustration as her doctor friend.

"These guys obviously had access to some pretty advanced medical technology," she said in a half-hearted attempt to keep the mood optimistic. "And we know they were trying to engineer this thing to be untraceable. There has to be something we're missing, some chemical property that would account for my symptoms and the difficulty we're having with the lab work. We find that, and we can figure out how to neutralize it."

Shelly and Skinner looked up from their work at her, though neither spoke, not wanting to shut down her pep talk. They'd had the same conversation a dozen times already, and it had not helped get them any further.

Shelly took a deep breath, not wanting to leave her friend and patient foundering in the bleakness of their (her) predicament.

"Alright, let's go over our best leads," she said tiredly, pulling out the large pad of paper on which they'd written, drawing-board-style, the names of any substances they'd been able to find or think of which could cause all of the symptoms Scully had thus far experienced. They'd been able to rule out several compounds based on what little they knew of the formula for the mind-control drug, of which trace amounts remained in her bloodstream.

Most of the substances on the list had already been crossed off; the few that remained were obscure and unlikely. Shelly ticked through them all once more while Scully waited patiently, not finding the heart to butt in with an objection.

"Here's something," Skinner chimed in cautiously from his computer. He didn't know much on the subjects he was being asked to research, and was hesitant to offer ideas. "The symptoms match up, at least. Hexachlorophene."

Shelly shook her head almost immediately, at which the Assistant Director pursed his lips. "Too common," she said dismissively. "We'd have ID'd it almost immediately, even without a clean sample. Besides, it isn't usually highly concentrated enough to elicit reactions as severe as Dana's last night."

Scully frowned, a little perturbed by Shelly's outright dismissal of Skinner's thought. "Maybe not usually, but he's right about the symptoms. Maybe what we're looking for is something with a similar chemical structure."

Shelly set down the pad of paper and turned back to her charts. "Alright, I'll take a look."

Scully turned back to her own book, but after a few minutes her phone rang, interrupting the atmosphere of careful, studious silence.

Though she knew who it was and answered on the first ring, Scully didn't dare get her hopes up. "Hello?"

"Scully," Mulder breathed on the other end, obviously relieved to hear her voice answer instead of one of her companions. "How are you doing? Any luck?"

Despite the careful ambiguity of the question, she knew he was anxious for an update on her condition.

With a sigh, she obliged him with just enough of an answer to prevent any further worrying on his part. "I'm doing alright. We've been hitting roadblocks all morning though. The toxin won't isolate enough for us to tell what it's made of. Skinner just had an idea that we're going to look into, though."

On the other end, Mulder gave a soft chuckle. "Skinner? I knew I left him with you for a reason." His light hearted banter was almost believable, but Scully knew her partner better than that and could hear the stress in his voice.

"What about you?" she edged, equally anxious to hear where he was and what he may have found.

Her question was partially answered by the sounds of Byers and Langly squabbling over something in the background. This time Mulder's laugh was a little more genuine.

"Well, I hunted down some help of my own," he said, and Scully could picture him hovering behind Frohike at one of the Gunmen's endless computers, a pile of sunflower seed husks growing steadily on the corner of the cluttered desk as Mulder nervously cracked them between his teeth. The familiar image brought a small smile to her lips.

"Byers and Langly are looking over your blood work," Mulder continued. "I'm not sure if they've found anything yet. Frohike and I are working on this Dr. Hunt. His earlier work may help us figure out the mechanism of the toxin; he used to experiment with altering the brain's chemistry in order to trick a subject's body into thinking it had any number of ailments, in order to see how the immune system would respond. Seems he did some under-the-radar trials on unsuspecting human subjects. He wasn't able to correct the chemical imbalances, and in the end the patient's bodies came under attack by their own immune systems, which were trying to fight off non existent diseases. Three patients died in his clinic. It was hard to track down, but a fourth test subject survived for several years after the trials. Unfortunately, she died in a car crash several years back so we won't be able to question her."

Scully rubbed at her eyes, feeling a headache brewing behind them. "I assume that's when he first lost his medical license?"

"Yeah, the clinic he was working out of pressed some pretty heavy charges," Mulder replied. "By all rights he should be in prison with another twenty years to serve. This guy has some pretty powerful benefactors."

Scully was about to inquire further about Dr. Hunt's practices when suddenly Skinner called her from across the room.

"Agent Scully, we've got new information from the lab at Quantico," he said, sounding hopeful. "You're going to want to take a look."

Turning, Scully could see that a fax had just come through the computer Skinner was occupying; Shelly was peering over his shoulder at the printout.

"Mulder, I have to go," she said quickly. "I'll call you when I figure out what the news is."

Scully stood and strode over to the desk where her companions were huddled.

"Let me take a look," she said, reaching for the papers. Wordlessly, Shelly handed them over. Skinner watched Scully's face intently, waiting for a reaction.

After a moment, Scully exhaled, her features relaxing in bemused awe. "Mulder was right," she said, mostly to herself. The papers she held contained only marginally more information on the substance than they'd already been able to find, but it was enough to ascertain how the toxin was working. Like the experiments that Dr. Hunt had conducted over a decade ago, it seemed that the drug was inhibiting a kind of diagnostic function in her brain, causing her immune response to malfunction.

Based on the information she held and the direction she assumed Mulder's hypothesis was going in, Scully guessed that if they were right, certain vital organs would begin slowly shutting down within a matter of hours. It was a bleak prognosis, but at least they had somewhere to start working on a cure.

Quickly, Scully explained the theory to Shelly.

"Alright," the doctor said with a sigh of relief. "I can work with this. Sit tight and rest for a while, I'm headed back down to the lab. Call me if you need anything, or if you get more theories from your partner."

Scully agreed with a smile and sat back down at her stack of books. Despite the new lead, she didn't want to get her hopes up. Besides, staying busy by reading endless scientific terminology was one sure way to keep her mind from wandering to any dark places. She checked her cell phone for battery life in case Mulder called again and settled in for what was likely to be a long few hours.


	19. Chapter 19

Ok, I think I'm back on track with this story now. Thanks everyone for keeping me inspired! This chapter was much, much longer, but I split it in two, so there will be another quick update (and its going to be a good one)

Enjoy!

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Frohike looked up from his monitor as Mulder hung up the phone.

"Was that Scully?"

Mulder nodded. "Yeah, it sounds like they haven't made much progress."

"Well, we may have."

Frohike turned the screen so Mulder could see what he'd just read.

"Turns out, after his license was renewed and Hunt started working with Pallister, he also took up residence at another clinic. It seems likely that he's conducting secret experiments again. This clinic might hold information about Scully's condition."

Mulder scooted in closer, quickly reading the information on the screen and committing the name and location of the clinic to memory.

"That's not far from here," Mulder murmured. Frohike watched his friend's face as the gears turned.

"See if you can find a blueprint of this place, or some photos," Mulder said, reaching for a handful of sunflower seeds. "I want to be able to get in and know exactly where I'm going."

Frohike turned back to the keyboard and resumed searching. After a few minutes, he'd found what they needed.

"They'll have security," Frohike warned. "Lots of it, if the PPC compound is any indicator."

Mulder gave him half a cynical smile, though his eyes were humorless. He was entirely focused, knowing that if they were right, everything could depend on the success of his mission.

"Well, I'll just have to not get caught."

XXX

8:20 p.m.

Though the sun had set outside, casting deep shadows across the quiet hospital grounds before the parking lot floodlights buzzed to life on their timers, inside the small room in the unused wing of the hospital where two FBI agents and a tired doctor sat, the passage of time was less easily discernible. Scully's room did not have any windows, and the cold fluorescent bulbs above them bathed the room in a constant, sterile, indifferent light.

Scully had taken up the chair where Mulder had sat at her bedside, refusing to return to the bed itself, though she felt wretched enough to collapse there and sleep for days.

In the hours since Shelly had returned to the lab, taking all conversation of toxins and antidotes with her, Scully had become increasingly disoriented. The havoc the various drugs had wreaked on her body and mind was becoming more and more apparent to Skinner, who sat in the corner, watching her worriedly.

Though Scully had spent a fair amount of time unconscious over the past several days, the chemicals interrupting her normal brain patterns had prevented her from getting any deep, restful sleep, and the various episodes she'd had throughout the night had woken her up on and off, completely destroying her internal clock.

Now that night was approaching once more, the harsh white light of the room made her feel out of sync, and normal things started to take on surreal qualities. In contrast to the hallucinations she'd experienced the previous day, while the drug was still active in her bloodstream, Scully was fully aware of what was happening to her.

Refusing to let her exhaustion render her useless to their work before a solution had been found, Scully had sunk into the chair by the bed several hours ago, the thick chemistry book still in hand. Now it sat still in her lap, open to a page that she'd turned to over an hour ago. Realizing that she was staring blankly at the words on the page, her eyes unfocused, Scully forced herself to sit up a little straighter, shaking her head to try to lift the fog that had been creeping in around the edges of her consciousness.

"Dana, please just rest," Skinner said quietly from across the room. "There's no point to you wearing yourself down any further."

Scully went to shake her head again, this time in an expression of denial of her exhaustion. But the moment she turned to look at him, the room tipped nauseatingly sideways and she felt like she might fall out of the chair. Squeezing her eyes shut, Scully held tightly to the book in her lap until the dizziness had passed. The spell was not lost on her superior, who still watched hawklike from his chair at the desk. If he was useful for nothing else, Skinner had told Mulder he'd keep an eye on his partner, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to do just that.

"Sir," Scully started weakly, but before he could open his mouth to cut off her protest, Shelly hurried through the door, an armful of charts and vials balanced carefully against her chest.

"I think I have something," she said breathlessly as she started setting things down on one of the metal tables. Scully looked up hopefully, feeling sharper, more aware.

"Really?"

Shelly turned to them, producing a small vial from her pocket and holding it out proudly. "I know we didn't have much to work with, but I've been over it and over it. I think that it will work."

Scully looked at the little vial with a delirious sense of wonderment. "How?"

"Well, I want you to look over my work before we administer anything," Shelly said quickly, making it clear that this cure was still not a certain thing. "And I want to get ahold of your partner to make sure he hasn't discovered anything new that might contradict our findings."

Scully looked up expectantly, and Shelly continued.

"Based on the way the toxin is affecting your brain, I've formulated a complex protein marker that should attach specifically to the hydrogen molecules in the toxin, attracting them away from your synapses and weakening the molecular structure. Theoretically, the compound will simply break apart into harmless smaller pieces. You'd have a significant chemical imbalance in your blood for a few days, but we'd at least have the extra time to treat that."

Scully's head spun. She wasn't as up to date on her chemistry as Shelly, but it all sounded liked crazy pseudo-science to her. But given the nature of their predicament, she found that she couldn't bring herself to be surprised that it was the only answer they'd yet been able to come up with.

"I would definitely like to look over your notes," Scully breathed, forcing herself to stand. "After I talk to Mulder. You're right in that he may well have found something else. I'd like to know of any alternative approaches, if they exist."

Scully retrieved her cell phone and hit Mulder's speed dial assignment before wandering into the other room. As much as she appreciated her friends looking out for her, she felt like she hadn't had a moment alone in days. In truth, she hadn't. But more than anything she was anxious to hear from her partner. Without being able to actively immerse herself in the science of hunting for a solution, Mulder's voice on the other end of the line was the only thing likely to keep her grounded as she continued to deteriorate. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed him right now.

The line rang, and rang again. Scully's eyebrows knitted together in a soft scowl as the tone repeated- six times before going to voicemail. Her frown deepened as his recorded voice played a slightly sardonic message, beseeching the caller to leave him one in return. She did so, quietly alluding to the developments that had taken place and asking that he call her back immediately.

Scully held her phone tightly for a moment after hanging up. It wasn't like him to not answer her; usually he picked up on the second ring, and that was a normal day. With his partner in mortal danger, Mulder would have his phone within arm's reach at all times, anxious for any updates.

 _He's fine_ , she told herself, biting her lip nervously. _He's just busy trying to save your life. He'll call back in no time. No need to invent more things to worry about._

After a moment she composed herself and went back into the room, where Shelly and Skinner watched her expectantly.

"He didn't answer," she said quickly, reaching for the papers that Shelly held. "I guess I'll just skip to reading your notes."

XXX

9:44 p.m.

Still no call.

Scully had read and reread the research. To her relief, the idea seemed more reasonable on paper than Shelly had made it sound. They were ready to give it a shot, and Scully couldn't reconcile putting off a potential solution any longer while they still had nothing else.

"Alright," she sighed, motioning to Shelly. "Let's try this."

"Ok, I know you're not going to like this, Dana, but I want to administer the solution slowly over the course of an hour or so, just in case you have a bad reaction. I'm going to put you on a concentrated IV drip. Get in the bed."

Scully's eyes narrowed but she did as she was told, making sure the reclining half of the bed was forward before leaning back against the pillows and getting comfortable.

As she did, she felt a hard, uncomfortable lump behind her shoulder blades, and she remembered the gun Mulder had insisted that she keep beneath the pillow. It made her wonder again where he was and if he was ok.

Scully sat passively as her friend swabbed her skin with iodine and prepared a fresh IV needle. This time it was inserted in the back or her hand, for which Scully was grateful; her arms were already quite sore from the various injections she'd received in the past several days.

"Alright," Shelly said when she was finished. "There's nothing left to do now but wait. Why don't you get some sleep, Dana?"

Scully gave an exasperated sigh. "Really, Shelly, I'm not-" she started, intending to end with 'tired', but abruptly cut herself off, realizing that it wasn't true. She suddenly felt very tired, her body pressing heavily back against the bed. The urge to let her eyelids droop grew stronger by the second, but she resisted, looking up at the doctor in alarm. Shelly said nothing but shared a conspiratorial glance with Skinner.

"Scully, we're only trying to get you well again," Skinner said apologetically. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned away, looking slightly abashed.

Scully tried irrationally to lift her right hand to tear the IV out of the back of her left, but her limbs were leaden and her mind was rapidly slipping away. She knew that her friends were only trying to help, and that they were doing the smart thing by putting her under, but Scully couldn't think straight enough to accept that. The panic that had set in at the feeling of the sedative coursing through her veins was unshakeable, and instead of the calm that normally accompanied the gentle slide into unconsciousness, she felt a desperate sense of betrayal.

Shelly could see it as her friend looked up at her accusingly through eyes she was struggling to keep open. It made her stomach twist with guilt.

"You…" Scully slurred out through a mouth made of molasses. It was all she could manage before the drugs won out and she fell deep into an artificial slumber.

When Dana's eyes had finally closed, her breathing becoming shallow and even, Shelly walked slowly into the other room and sat down with a sigh across from Skinner.

""I should have asked her permission," she said uncomfortably.

Skinner shook his head. "No, she'd never have let you touch her if she knew it was coming," he said ruefully. "Trust me. Since Dana came to work for the Bureau, she's grown a pretty thick skin. She and Mulder….they've been through some pretty crazy stuff. It's little wonder they don't trust anyone. But when she wakes up and feels better, she'll forgive you."

Shelly nodded uncertainly, grateful for his words but not sure how to respond. After a moment, Skinner stood.

"I'm going for coffee, want some?"

Shelly shook her head, and he left her there alone with her thoughts.


	20. Chapter 20

As promised - I couldn't wait that long to post this because I had so much fun writing it. That's all I'll say. :P

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When Mulder's phone rang, he hadn't noticed, because he was busy dangling by both arms from a third-story window ledge.

The cell phone in the right front pocket of his pants had the ringer turned off, just in case Scully, Skinner or someone else decided to call when he was in a compromising position. Naturally, that is exactly what happened, but Mulder's body was already shaking from the exertion of holding his own weight thirty feet above the ground, so he didn't notice the gentle vibrations of the phone against his leg.

"Frohike," Mulder hissed into the tiny receiver of the minimal ear-to-mouth headset he wore, connecting him to his help on the ground. "I need to get back in there, now!"

"Just ten more seconds, Mulder, they're walking out!"

Trying to ignore the painful burning in his spent muscles, Mulder gritted his teeth and started counting to ten. He'd made it to six before he couldn't hold on any longer. Grunting with exertion, he pulled himself shakily up onto the narrow ledge outside of the window he'd made his hasty retreat through. With a quiet groan he pushed the window open again and rolled through, falling in a panting heap on the floor inside. In his ear, Frohike sighed in relief.

"I see you, Mulder," he said, letting his friend know they were back on track. "Nobody else on this floor anymore. You're good to go."

"Give me a sec," Mulder panted, sitting up and leaning back against the wall. His two-day-old gunshot wound was screaming in protest from the ordeal. Bringing a hand to his side, Mulder probed it through the bandage; some stitches had definitely torn loose. Shelly wasn't going to be happy with him for that. Neither was Scully, for that matter.

When his heart rate had returned to normal, Mulder stood. "Alright," he said, half to himself and half to Frohike as he surveyed the dark room.

It had been a fluke that the two men had wandered into the room while Mulder was snooping around; Frohike had hacked the building's cameras and had eyes on all the hallways. He'd seen them come out of the door adjacent to Mulder's with just enough time to warn the agent to hide; unfortunately, the room was small and sparsely furnished, so the window had been his only choice, other than getting caught, and that was not an option.

Mulder and Frohike had spent the evening planning their infiltration of the Shearing-Greensley Medical Research Clinic, starting by studying blueprints of the building to determine the location of Hunt's offices and culminating in hacking into the building's security systems to give Frohike access to the surveillance cameras and the automatic-lock doors which guarded restricted areas, accessible only by high clearance level key-cards which were possessed by only a few scientists in the building. A little over a half hour ago, Frohike had triggered one such door to open, letting Mulder slip into the pharmacological research wing of the building.

The small room that Mulder stood in now was almost closer to a closet; four square walls lined with filing cabinets surrounded two computers on spindly back-to-back desks. This had to be part of the clinic's research archives.

"Ok, keep a lookout, Frohike," he said as he strode to the nearest wall of cabinets. "I'm going to be here for a few minutes and I'd rather not have to play 'how long before Mulder falls to his death' again."

"You got it," Frohike crackled through the earpiece, sounding apologetic. "Sorry about that, Mulder."

Reading the labels on the first few cabinets top to bottom, it seemed that they were assigned arbitrarily, which would make his search a lot longer. After closer inspection, however, he found that the categories wrapped around the room; the top drawer of each cabinet being a division of medical research, followed by personnel specific to that branch and their various projects, followed by, if applicable, their patients.

Quickly making a lap of the small room, Mulder found the object of his search five cabinets in on the the third wall; Hunt's name appeared in a cabinet labelled "Experimental Diagnostics". He was listed under the title of Director of Pharmacology. Under this, there were several drawers of Hunt's paperwork, ranging from certificates of scientific recognition to old lab supply orders to unfinished reports on his various experiments. Mulder thumbed through a few of the latter, but didn't find anything that seemed relevant.

The last drawer in Hunt's filing cabinet, all the way down at the bottom, contained files on people who must have been patients. Their numbers were vast, crammed into the small space so tightly that it was impossible to see the names displayed on the tabs. Hoping that they were at least alphabetized, Mulder took out a chunk near the back and was glad to see that his stack started somewhere in the P's. His heart started to beat a little faster as he flipped quickly through to the S's.

 _Scully, Dana K._

Mulder stopped when he hit her name, feeling like he'd been running at a dead sprint and someone had yanked him back by a leash. For a moment, he just stared at the folder in his hands, afraid to open it.

He exhaled heavily, clutching the folder tightly. It was what he'd come for- surely there would be notes or charts within that could help him save his partner. But however glad he should be to find it, he couldn't bring himself to feel joy. Instead, he felt sickened.

Mulder shook his head slightly, again reminding himself of Scully's words.

 _No time for this_ , he told himself. _Pull yourself together_.

Quickly he stuffed the rest of the folders back in the drawer and pushed it quietly shut. The folder with Scully's name he tucked into a small black bag he'd worn slung over his shoulders.

As he stood to slip out the door, Mulder found himself distracted by the two computers in the center of the room.

"Hey, Frohike," he muttered quietly into the mic. "Am I still good for a few minutes?"

Frohike gave a quick affirmative, and Mulder sat down at one of the computers. It was open to a simple desktop screen with two icons that were unfamiliar to him. In the center of the screen was a search bar, similar to a modern library catalog search engine. It had three different text windows, and Mulder was able to type his keywords as well as organize the results in order of recency.

The words he chose were Hunt's name and Scully's; after an agonizing moment of the page loading, one result came up. After giving the document a cursory glance, Mulder hit PRINT. When the pages had settled in the printer tray, he scooped them up and added them to the bag, making sure to close out of the window before turning back to the exit.

"Alright, I've got some files that look promising," he whispered as he poked his head out into the hall. It was empty. "Now I need to get to the lab. If there's an antidote, he'll have it there, I'm sure of it."

In his makeshift surveillance van on the street, Frohike switched screens to track Mulder's movements on a different camera, also looking ahead for anyone his friend might encounter.

"Next floor down," he said after double-checking on a copied blueprint. "Last door on the right. It'll be locked, so wait for me when you get there."

Mulder kept his hand on his gun as he navigated the hallways that would lead him back to the stairs. He didn't bother ducking his head or trying to look inconspicuous, because the moment somebody saw him, it would be over. Fortunately, he didn't see anyone and was on the second floor in a matter of seconds.

The last door on the right was guarded by a thick electronic keypad, on which an indicator light glowed red. In his ear, Frohike was mumbling incoherently as he worked on the lock, and a moment later the light turned green with an accompanying beep. Mulder pushed the door open and slipped inside, closing it carefully behind him. When he turned to see the contents of the lab, Mulder's knees buckled and he almost fell, reaching out to the wall for support. He stared, his head shaking involuntarily in denial of the sight before him.

 _No, that's not possible. It can't be._ He felt like all the breath had been forced from his lungs in one heavy blow.

Several yards away a figure lay strapped to an examination table, partially covered by a sheet.

The figure was still; unmoving.

And it was Scully.


	21. Chapter 21

To everyone who has reviewed these past couple chapters, thanks! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to view most of your reviews for some reason. If anybody has experienced this before and has advice, please message me, because I really want to see your feedback. Despite feeling like I'm going in blind, I wanted to publish this next chapter so as not to leave you with that terrible cliffhanger for too long. Here you go!

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"Scully…"

Her name fell from his lips in a hushed, bottomless kind of disbelief.

Mulder let go of the wall, stumbling slightly as he walked toward the petite form on the table, the red hair splayed about her head in a partial halo.

But before he had a chance to completely fall apart, a tense, tight sigh of relief forced its way out of his throat. It wasn't her.

"Oh, God," Mulder breathed, running his hands over his face as he stopped several feet away from the woman on the table. An uncanny look-alike to be sure, but not Scully.

In his ear, he was vaguely aware of Frohike's voice, sounding alarmed as he asked what was happening. He could see Mulder on one of the cameras and had no way of knowing who the woman on the table was.

"It's not her," Mulder said softly, and the frantic questions stopped. "Give me a minute, Frohike."

As the panic slowly subsided, his heart beats fluttering back to a normal, steady cadence, he started to pick out the differences. The hair was longer, a bit darker. The lips were not quite as full as hers. The woman's eyes were closed, but Mulder got the peculiar sense that they would be green, not the piercing blue of his partner's.

It seemed unnecessary, but Mulder put two fingers to the woman's throat, feeling for any sign of a pulse. There was none, and her skin was cold to the touch.

Now that the shock of finding the body had worn off, Mulder looked around the rest of the lab, trying to find any indication of what had been done to the dead redhead, or why. He found nothing, but it occurred to Mulder that if anyone knew there was a body down here, they'd be back soon to get it to the morgue. He had very little time.

On the other end of the room, Mulder spotted a wide metal door that looked like it might lead to a cold storage unit. It, too, was guarded by a keypad. However, the lock wasn't activated, so he cracked it open and looked in. Inside the small space, hundreds of cases of vials sat on tall metal shelves. The vials were slightly frosted with cold, and when Mulder exhaled he could see his breath on the air.

Pulling one case down, he saw that all the vials were labelled with short serial numbers which meant nothing to him and provided no basis for knowing what they contained. Mulder cursed under his breath and put the case back.

Knowing he was probably pushing his luck with the clock, Mulder reached back into his bag for the file on Scully. He flipped through the pages, looking for anything that resembled the serial numbers he had seen. Several showed up; BXC14271, CBN113960, and HXC33875. Quickly he began rummaging through the shelves, looking for the vials that belonged to those numbers.

To his dismay, Frohike's voice came over the earpiece once more. "Mulder, I can't see you in there, but you're about to have company," he said in a warning tone. "Three guys coming down the hall, and there's no other door in the direction they're headed. You have to hide!"

Mulder cursed again. He'd found one of the numbers, but needed more time for the other two; there were hundreds of vials to look through.

"I just need a few more minutes," he said, as if Frohike could give him more time.

"Well, you've got about 50 seconds."

Mulder threw the case he'd just finished back on the shelf and started on another. After a moment, his heart leapt when he found the second vial. One more to go.

"Mulder, they're in the lab! Wherever you are, stay there and make yourself invisible."

"Shit, shit, shit…" Mulder muttered as he stuffed the two vials in his bag. There was nowhere to hide. Looking down, he saw that the lowest shelf rose about 14 inches off the ground. Stuffing the backpack in first, Mulder lay flat on his belly and slid sideways until his body was tucked all the way under the structure. The metal shelves were not solid, so if anyone chanced to look down, they might see the back of his head between boxes. Mulder silently prayed that didn't happen.

Seconds after he'd pulled his left leg all the way into the cramped hiding space, the door to the storage room opened, the four wheels of a long table or cart preceding the feet of the men who pushed it past Mulder's line of sight.

The two men were talking in low, serious tones.

"This room will be kept restricted to Level D clearance until further notice," one man was saying as they went about moving whatever was on the cart. "Shouldn't be more than a day or two. The FBI agent will be dead by tomorrow night, and as soon as her funeral arrangements are made we can switch the bodies."

Mulder lay perfectly still as he listened, scarcely daring to breathe. They were talking about Scully!

The second man spoke up, sounding troubled. "Isn't that a bit too risky? Someone will notice it isn't the right woman. We've raised enough suspicions on this one already. We never should have targeted a federal agent."

"She gave me no choice!" The other man snapped. "But it will be fine. It has already been arranged. The FBI will want to autopsy Agent Scully's body, and the pathologist doing the procedure will be one of ours. An accident in the lab will ensure that her funeral will be closed-casket."

Mulder heard a heavy thump followed by a rustling of sheets.

"I know there is risk, but this case has been far too abnormal to let such valuable information go to waste. It is essential that I do an in-depth post mortem inspection of her brain. Based on what we know so far, Dana Scully could change the course of our work entirely."

Once more, the wheels rolled past Mulder's hiding place, followed out the door by two pairs of feet. The door clicked shut behind them, and Mulder could hear their continued conversation fade as the crossed the lab. He didn't move until a moment later when he heard the second door open and their voices disappeared altogether. Slowly, he shimmied out from underneath the shelf, vaguely aware that he was shivering from being pressed against the cold concrete for so long.

Feeling slightly dazed, Mulder walked the few short steps to the other side of the room where the dead woman's body had been left on a low shelf. The sheet now obscured all of her features, but Mulder stared at her uncomprehendingly anyway.

Had the woman already been dead, her body pilfered from a nearby morgue? Or had she been selected and then murdered by these men, for whom no moral or legal boundaries seemed to exist, simply for her unfortunate resemblance to Scully?

Scully.

Mulder's stomach twisted as he recalled the conversation he'd unwittingly eavesdropped upon. He could hardly believe what he had heard. Their crimes up to this point had been horrible enough; forcing innocent people to murder and then disposing of them like pieces of meat. But now they spoke nonchalantly of waiting for Scully to die so they could steal her body and study her brain...it was unthinkable. Mulder bristled with anger, the tremors that ran through his clenched fists no longer caused by the cold.

"Frohike, did you hear any of that?"

For a moment, he was answered only by static. The signal was probably being weakened by the thick walls of the refrigerator room. Mulder strode to the door that lead back out to the main laboratory and pressed his hands against the frosted metal, pushing to open it.

It didn't budge.

Mulder swore under his breath. They locked the door on the way out, so that no unsuspecting young nurse could happen upon the body they'd just stashed.

"Frohike, you there?" Mulder said into the headset again, a little more urgent this time. He pushed heavily against the door again, leaning into it with his shoulder. Still no give.

Static hissed through the earpiece once more, and this time Mulder could make out a couple words. "...can't...Muld-...get-"

"I can't hear you, Frohike, but you've gotta work the lock on this cold storage unit, I'm trapped!"

For a full, heart-pounding minute, there was silence from the headset. Just before Mulder was about to start ramming the door with a shelf, Frohike's voice came in, this time clear enough to understand. He'd found a way around the interference.

Bless that little man for building walkie-talkies since he was five, Mulder thought.

"Mulder, I'm working the lock now," Frohike muttered, sounding frantic. "But as soon as it's open, be ready to run. I think someone caught onto us."

Mulder sputtered, staring at the still-closed door. He was starting to get really, really cold. "Run where?" he demanded. He was still on the second floor.

"Five more seconds on the door," Frohike promised. "There's a security detail coming up now. Two in each hallway. Mulder, they look armed."

"Great."

"You'll have to beat them to the south stairwell. It spits out right next to a door to the lawn. I'm at the curb twenty yards away. Passenger door will be open. Go!"

A tiny beep and a click was all that Mulder needed; grabbing the backpack, he threw his weight against the door and burst out into the lab at a run. Ahead of him, the next door gave as well, and Mulder dashed into the hallway. The south stairwell was only fifteen yards away, lit by a glowing red EXIT sign overhead.

Behind him, Mulder heard shouting, followed by more sets of running footsteps. He didn't turn to see his pursuers, but kept up his frantic sprint for the stairs.

He'd almost made it when he heard a muffled pop, followed by a strange whistling sound. In the wall ahead of him, about chest level, a tiny dart-like projectile thudded into the wall. The pop sounded again, and Mulder ducked to the side, narrowly avoiding the second dart.

One hand on the door to the stairs, Mulder drew his gun with the other, quickly firing two shots behind him. He could not let them capture him alive. Neither bullet found a target, but it gave him enough cover to dive into the stairwell before they could fire at him again.

Mulder took the stairs four at a time, practically falling out onto the lawn when he reached the ground level door. Three more shots popped off from behind him as he sprinted to the van.

"Ah-!" Mulder cried out as a sharp pain pierced the back of his leg. As promised, Frohike had the car door open for him and was frantically gesturing at him to get in. Adrenaline carried him the last few pounding strides and he collapsed into the passenger seat.

"Drive!" Mulder yelled, and without a glance at the road, Frohike hit the gas.

The tires screeched as they pulled out, but they sounded almost distant. Frohike was yelling, shaking him roughly by the shoulder, but Mulder could feel himself beginning to sink.

The last thing he remembered was the glare of headlights on the road, and a dull ache in his leg.


	22. Chapter 22

Yay, your reviews showed up! Thanks, everyone!

ScienceLove2713 - I've always casually been into science and medical; I read a lot of journals and books, but don't have a formal background. I've actually been waiting for someone of real scientific background to call me out on my made-up drugs and procedures, so your inquiry is very flattering :D

Sorry for jerking you guys around so much these past few chapters, I've been writing without much of an outline for a while and the result is lots of drama and cliffhangers. oops.

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Voices murmured around him in hushed, serious tones.

For a long time, he was unable to move or lift his heavy eyelids, and could only listen to the indistinguishable conversation as he tried to recall where he was or what had happened.

Slowly, his senses became more accessible, the voices sharpening into real words like images focusing in the lens of a camera. He recognized the mellow cadence of the man who was speaking now, sounding worried. John Byers.

He still couldn't quite place the reason why Byers would be here, wherever here was, until his sentence sharpened enough to be understood by the sluggish, drug-hampered brain.

"...he'll want to talk to Scully…." were the first words that stuck out.

Suddenly the events of the night rushed back, and Mulder's eyes opened to see the Lone Gunmen sitting at various distances around him. He blinked and realized that he was lying on his back on the three friends' battered black leather sofa. The room was dimly lit, for which he was grateful; his head was throbbing fiercely.

"You're right," he said hoarsely, pulling himself upright, startling the three men. "I do want to talk to Scully. We have to tell her what I found. Frohike-"

"Mulder, hold on," Byers, who was closest, said, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him from standing up too quickly. "You've just been tranquilized. You need to sit still for a moment." He shared a glance with his companions, then reached for a glass of water on the coffee table. "Besides, a lot has happened while you were out. Drink, and we'll fill you in."

Mulder took a sip, hoping the cold water would help the pounding in his head.

"What happened after we escaped the clinic?"

"Well, pretty much as soon as you got in the car, you collapsed," Frohike said. "You were completely unresponsive, and I had no idea what had happened. Scared the hell outta me, man. I didn't know what else to do, so I brought you back here."

"We found the dart in your leg and figured out you weren't dead pretty quickly," Langly chimed in. "Clearly these guys wanted to talk to you when they caught you. Or do more freaky experiments. It's a good thing you made it to the car."

"How long was I out?"

"A couple of hours. Since Frohike got back here with you, we've been able to look over the stuff in your bag."

He paused, and Mulder's heart sank a little. The look on Byers' face did not say 'good news'.

"One of the vials that you stole did contain a sample of the toxin that Scully was given," Byers started. "And we were able to figure out why it's been so impossible to work with. The active ingredient, the thing that's causing the damage to her brain, is an experimental chemical called HXC3. We recognized it from the label on the vial. The bad news is, it's incredibly complicated and dangerous to synthesize. The closest place where we could find any is a top-security government research lab in Georgia. Even with all our combined connections, there's no way."

Mulder looked from Byers to Frohike and back. "Well, we don't need it, right? Now that we have the sample, we can just use that as the basis for the antidote."

Byers shook his head. "Unfortunately, in order to create an antidote which will fully counter the toxin's effects, we would need a pure sample of the HXC3. We tried separating it from the other elements in the toxin, but the whole thing was too unstable. It's engineered to fully bind only when it comes into contact with certain chemicals in the brain. I'm afraid the sample is useless."

Mulder ran his hands over his face, trying to mentally regroup. When he looked back up, the mingled pity and apprehension on Byers' face told him there was more bad news.

"What?" he asked warily, suddenly afraid. What else had they found while he was unconscious?

Byers looked down, and Frohike cleared his throat, looking equally unhappy.

"Scully tried to call you while you were in there," he said, meeting Mulder's eyes. "I guess Shelly thought she had a breakthrough. We didn't see the message until about an hour ago and called them back right away. They sedated Scully and gave her the treatment around ten o'clock."

Mulder's stomach tightened; he didn't like where this was headed.

"About two hours after she was given the drugs, Scully had a series of seizures. Her heart rate and blood pressure dropped way down. They've got her stabilized temporarily, but she hasn't woken up yet….Dr. Hilton is considering putting her in a medically-induced coma to give you more time, but it sounds like our deadline just got a lot shorter."

Mulder closed his eyes for a moment, taking deep breath. It was a lot to take in. He had to push his feelings aside and stay focused. When he opened his eyes again, the Gunmen were all watching him with expressions of nervous worry. He glanced from one face to the next, hoping there was a good note to end on. Nobody said anything.

"So you're saying we still have nothing?" he asked, barely able to hide his dismay. "That if I don't meet Dr. Brontman and make the trade, Scully's going to die?"

Their piteous stares and slumped shoulders were all the answer he needed.

"You'd better hope he holds up his end of the bargain," Byers said miserably. Mulder bristled at the thought.

"I refuse to believe that we're out of options," he said in a low near-growl. "We've got to be close."

He turned his gaze to Frohike. "How long did Shelly give me?"

"Not long enough. Mulder-"

"How long?"

Frohike sighed. "Seven or eight hours, tops."

"Alright….I'm going to try to reach Brontman and set up the meeting. In the meantime, I want you guys to look over everything I grabbed from that lab again. There's gotta be something in there that can help us."

Langly and Byers each gave him a weak smile before retreating to the corner desk, where the Gunmen's makeshift lab equipment had been set up. Mulder stood, perhaps a little too quickly, because he was instantly overcome by vertigo. Frohike reached out to steady him before he could fall.

"Easy, pal," he muttered, ignoring Mulder's attempts to brush him off. "I don't know what those guys knocked you out with, but it must have been some pretty serious stuff. I slapped you right across the face half a dozen times trying to wake you up and you didn't even flinch."

Mulder froze, a terrible thought creeping into his mind as Frohike spoke. Suddenly he took Frohike by the shoulders, alarming the smaller man with the frantic look in his eyes.

"Mulder, what-"

"Did you find the dart? The one they shot me with?"

"Yeah, it's over there with Langly," Frohike said, nodding towards the back table. "We never got a chance to check it out, skipped right to the stuff from the lab."

Langly and Byers glanced back, sharing Frohike's expression of confused alarm. Mulder's stomach twisted in an anxious knot.

"I know I just told you to run the vials again, but the dart is more important. How fast can you find out what was?"

Langly shrugged. "Five or ten minutes?"

"You don't think they may have drugged you...with the same thing that they gave Scully?" Frohike frowned up at Mulder.

"I really hope not, Frohike, but if they did it would be the perfect diversion. Get me out of the way, confuse or outnumber Skinner, and there's nothing stopping them from carrying out their plans with Scully."

"Plans?" Frohike sputtered. "What plans? I thought they just wanted her dead!"

"I'll explain later, right now I just need to know if I'm about to start doing things against my will. If I do, you guys gotta lock me in a closet or something and get all this stuff to Skinner."

Langly turned to the clumsy lab, not looking back as he gave Mulder the thumbs up that signified he'd started analysing the dart. Byers stood and walked back over to them, a troubled look on his face.

"Mulder, if you'd been dosed with the drug, you wouldn't be acting like yourself right now. You'd have started showing symptoms before we had any idea what was going on."

Mulder shook his head, starting to pace. "No," he muttered. "With Scully, it was like nothing was wrong at first. I totally thought she was fine. Then suddenly it was like a switch had been flipped."

Frohike and Byers exchanged a worried glance. "Alright, then, give me your gun," Frohike said, holding out his hand. "Just in case."

Mulder nodded, reaching for his holster.

"No need!" Langly chirped from across the room, sounding pleased with himself. "No mind-control potion here, Mulder. Just a very potent sedative. You have no excuse to off any of us today!"

Mulder sighed in relief, snapping his gun back into place. Frohike handed him his cell phone from off the table. With it was a scrap of paper with a telephone number and address scrawled in messy handwriting. "We tracked down Brontman's contact information while you were out. I imagine he'll answer his phone to you, but if not we can always go storm the house."

He clapped Mulder on the shoulder and turned to his companions. "Alright, as you were, guys," he said sharply. "We've got work to do."

Mulder took the phone and the scrap of paper and stepped out into the stairwell. Trying to keep his worry and anger at bay, he dialed the unfamiliar numbers. Despite the late hour, the line connected after two rings. Mulder waited with bated breath, not giving the man on the other end the satisfaction of speaking first.

"Have you found yourself desperate enough to consider my offer, then, Agent Mulder?" Brontman asked smoothly, as if he'd been waiting for the call all night.

"You'll meet me somewhere out in the open," Mulder said, his voice low and threatening. "Alone."

"Funny, I thought that I was the one in charge of our deal," Brontman said icily. "However, those terms are what the same I would have asked of you. There's a carpool lot off the highway eleven miles from the hospital. Be there at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon with the tape."

"No," Mulder said quickly, before Brontman could hang up. "It has to be sooner than that. Whatever you bastards gave her is acting a lot faster than you predicted. I'll be there at 5:00 a.m. That's in a little over four hours."

Mulder's heart pounded faster as he said the words; he knew he would be cutting it too close for comfort.

"Alright," Brontman agreed. "5:00. Any sign of hidden agents or other backup, and you won't even see me."

The line clicked and went dead.


	23. Chapter 23

Sorry for the long-ish wait on this one; it was a little slower in writing because it's just a lot of dialogue set-up for the next few chapters. Lots of feels, though.

ScienceLove2713: Dammit, I was hoping you'd say anything other than chemistry haha. Wish I could go back and take chem instead of physics.

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2:08 a.m.

The chair by the side of the bed was a tired, well-worn thing, almost a caricature of the many people who sat in it, shoulders slumped with worry for their loved ones who were ill or injured. The firm, dark upholstery had long given up its rigidity, giving way to a soft, battered grey. It was not an inherently uncomfortable piece of furniture, but it was made so by the long hours one spent in it, hips squared to the floor and spine curving unhealthily as the sitter lost the fight against sleep.

The chair's current occupant, however, was far from tired, though he was beginning to grow achy at his post. Though he'd kept his distance before, when she was awake, Walter Skinner had since moved to the chair previously occupied by her partner.

For the first hour or so after they'd given Scully the treatment, everything had seemed normal; Dr. Hilton flitted about the room, checking monitors and scribbling on her patient's chart. Nothing seemed to improve, but nothing happened to warn them of her sudden decline, either.

One moment Scully was lying still, her rhythmic breathing keeping time with the quiet beep of the heart monitor; the next, she was seizing violently in the bed, thrashing against the blankets and making a terrible choking sound.

Skinner had been up and at her side in a moment, Shelly appearing opposite him across the bed. Together they held her down until the fit had passed, afraid that she would injure herself. When the seizures began to subside, Shelly quickly disconnected the IV tube from the bag that was releasing a steady drip of the experimental treatment into Scully's bloodstream, replacing it with a standard saline solution.

When that was done, she prepped a syringe of anticonvulsant, pushing it quickly into the IV line. Slowly, Scully's movements calmed to a slight tremor before she fell still entirely. Skinner watched with bated breath as Dr. Hilton checked her vitals.

"I'm guessing your treatment didn't work?" he edged when he saw Shelly frown at the heart monitor.

"No…" she said distractedly, striding quickly back across the room for something. "I don't know how, but it seems that what I gave her has accelerated the effects of the drug already in her system. I don't understand...it should have worked."

Skinner sighed, letting out the breath he'd been holding, then nodded to Scully. "How is she now?"

Shelly looked up at him from across the bed, getting ready to slide another syringe into the IV tube.

"Worse. Her blood pressure is way too low, and if it drops any further she'll go into hypotensive shock. I'm afraid to administer any more drugs but if I don't increase the blood flow there won't be enough oxygen getting to her brain." As she spoke, she pushed the plunger, letting the medicine drip into the saline mixture.

"You should call Agent Mulder," she said, looking up to meet his eyes. "If I can't get her blood pressure back up, I may have to induce a comatose state. Even then, I can't say how long she'd have. He's out of time."

Skinner had nodded dejectedly, retreating to the hallway to call Mulder's cell. When Melvin Frohike answered, his voice tight with concern, Skinner's heart sank further. Quickly and somberly they had traded information, neither quite sure on how to proceed. Skinner promised to call with any new information, asking that they do the same.

Now he sat in the well-worn chair, deep in thought. The Bureau was by no means a safe line of work, and their investigations into the X Files had made Mulder and Scully targets in the sights of many enemies, so it couldn't really surprise Skinner anymore when his agents found themselves in mortal danger. The thing was, he could usually count on them to bail each other out. Now, Scully seemed to be lying on her deathbed and Mulder had been incapacitated as well, his plans to save her put on hold for hours that she may not have.

If it were a simple matter of gun power and brute force, Skinner would lead a SWAT team into the clinic or the warehouse lab right now. But it was far more complicated than that and instead he found himself feeling lost, unable to help.

When Scully had stabilized, her blood pressure coming up just far enough out of the danger zone to ensure that she wouldn't go into shock immediately, Shelly had retreated to her office to try to rest. Now, several hours later, Skinner was still wide awake, watching over Scully.

When her hand twitched, he perked up immediately, waiting hopefully for more movement. After a moment, he was rewarded as Scully groaned and turned her head. It took her several more minutes to come to fully, but finally, her eyes did open. For a minute they wandered listlessly throughout the room, eventually coming to land on him.

Scully gave a small cough. "Traitor," She said hoarsely.

Skinner blinked, slightly taken aback. It was certainly not what he'd expected her to say. 'Where's Mulder?' or 'Where am I?' would have been a little more typical.

"Scully, don't try to talk just yet," he said, studying her. She looked pretty aware, but maybe the lingering effects of the sedative were causing her to relive her earlier experiences. "You're still feeling tired and confused. It should pass soon."

Her eyes narrowed. "Well, that's because you drugged me," she grumbled. "Or Shelly did, but you're guilty by association. As a doctor I don't appreciate my own tricks being used against me."

Skinner sighed, part in relief that Scully was herself with her own memories, and part in annoyance that she wouldn't just drop it. He opened his mouth to reply, but she beat him to the punch line.

"I know, I know. It was for my own good," she muttered. "Has anything happened?"

Skinner's eyes softened when they met hers. "Unfortunately, a lot," he said heavily. "The medicine that Shelly gave you didn't work. In fact, it backfired. You were in pretty bad shape a few hours ago."

"I see." Scully nodded slowly, trying not to let the effect of this new blow show on her face. "Where is she?"

"She had to rest," Skinner said, gesturing to the door. "She had done everything she could and felt comfortable leaving you with me. She's just down the hall in her office, though."

Scully nodded again, understanding of this. Her friend had barely slept since Mulder had shown up, bleeding and desperate, with a delirious version of herself which Scully did not remember handcuffed in the backseat.

"Have you heard from Mulder?"

Skinner shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"Not directly," he said. "And not in some time. A few hours ago he was discovered breaking into a medical research facility. He escaped, but they shot him with some sort of tranquilizer. He was still out a hour or so ago when I talked to Frohike."

"Damn it," Scully breathed, shutting her eyes. "Call them," she said, looking back up at Skinner. "I at least want to hear from Frohike if Mulder's okay."

Seeing as there was nothing more productive to do, Skinner agreed and skimmed through his contacts, selecting the number he had saved collectively for the Lone Gunmen at their place of residence. Since it had taken them an hour to notice Mulder's last missed call, he decided not to bother with the agent's phone. When it was Mulder who answered the phone, Skinner was both surprised and relieved.

"Skinner, it's me," Mulder said impatiently, anxious for news of any advancements at the hospital. "I woke up a little while ago and the guys filled me in." Since then, he and the Gunmen had made no further progress. "How's Scully?" On his end of the line, Mulder sat tensely, expecting more bad news.

Skinner glanced up at Scully, who was watching him with expectant eyes.

"Why don't you ask her?" Skinner said to Mulder, smiling slightly at Scully as she realized who he was speaking to. She returned his smile as she gratefully took the phone from his hand.

"Scully?"

"Hey," she breathed in response, relieved that he was alright.

At the desk he currently occupied, Mulder relaxed slightly at the sound of her voice. She sounded tired, but not like a woman on her deathbed. Across the room, the Gunmen had ceased their activities to eavesdrop, hoping for their friend's sake that there was good news.

"I didn't think I'd be hearing your voice again this soon," Mulder said, half-aware of his audience.

' _Or ever again'_ , were the words that Scully knew he was thinking, but would never say.

"How are you holding up?" he asked softly, his concern plain in his voice. "I heard you had a pretty rough night."

"I'm, uh...I'm feeling alright. Tired and a little disoriented, but otherwise not terrible." Scully bit her lip in the momentary silence that followed. They were both edging around the conversation that neither wanted to have. "What about you? Skinner told me you got caught breaking into a research lab somewhere. What happened?"

Mulder quickly told her the story, omitting more than he divulged. He told her of the files he'd found, and of the vials of neurotoxin which had turned out to be of no use, but made no mention of the doppleganger body; nor would he, unless she found out some other way. Mulder admired his partner's ability to become detached in difficult cases, but the existence of the dead redhead and her intended purpose were too morbid for even Scully to handle.

"Lucky for me, Frohike's a practiced getaway driver," he joked, trying to keep the mood light.

Scully tried to smile, but she knew he was just trying to distract her. They were out of time.

"You've got to contact Brontman now." It wasn't a question, but her uncertain tone made it clear how she felt about striking a deal with one of the men who'd done this to her.

Mulder sighed. "I already have," he said quietly. "I'm meeting him in a couple hours."

Scully's stomach fluttered uneasily. Since she'd woken up, finally herself, the day before, the whole ordeal had seemed to last forever, but now everything was happening too quickly. She didn't trust any of it. But they were out of options.

"And what if he's lying?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. "What if there is no antidote, and he's just luring you there to kill you?"

Despite her efforts, Mulder could hear the desperation in his partner's voice.

"I'm going to be careful, Scully," he promised. "And meanwhile, Shelly and the guys are going to keep working on an alternative. If there is an antidote, I'll be back with it in no time. If not, I'll shoot that bastard on the spot and we'll figure something else out."

"Mulder-"

"Scully, whatever happens, we're going to fix this. You're going to be fine."

Scully closed her eyes, momentarily unable to respond as she felt her throat tighten. When she trusted her voice enough to speak, her words still came out watery.

"I trust you, Mulder," she said, taking a deep breath. "Please be careful."

"I'll be back before you know it," he said softly. "Give the phone back to Skinner real fast, will you?"

Scully looked up to the corner desk that Skinner had retreated to trying not to intrude on the conversation.

"Sir, Mulder would like to speak to you."

"Hang tight, Scully, I'll see you soon." Mulder pointedly refused to use any variation of 'goodbye'.

Scully handed the phone to Skinner, closing her eyes again. The tightness in her throat got worse, accompanied by a stinging in her tear ducts.

Sensing that whatever Mulder had to say was not for his partner's ears, Skinner retreated to the adjoining room where Scully couldn't hear them talk.

"What's your plan, Mulder? I hope you have one, because this isn't looking good."

"I know," Mulder muttered, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm. "I've arranged to meet this doctor. He can't be trusted, but there's no other option. If there's even the smallest chance that he'll actually trade for the antidote, I have to try."

Skinner started to pace, his exasperation seeping into his voice. "I'll go with you," he offered. "You know there's a very good chance that they'll just kill you and take the tape. Someone has to have your back, Mulder."

"No," Mulder said sharply. "He made it very clear that if I'm not alone, he won't even show. I know how badly that smells like a setup, trust me. But I need you to stay with Scully. I need you to make sure she's still alive when I get back."

 _Still alive._ Like the impulse to swallow back a wave of nausea, Mulder balked at the words as he spoke them, his throat trying to close around them before they could get out.

 _She's going to be fine_. It had become a mantra at this point, keeping him grounded so he could work unhindered by his own thoughts.

Skinner sensed his agent's struggle and chose not to argue. "I'll be with her," he promised. "But get back with that medicine soon. If she has another attack..."

Mulder didn't let him finish.

"I'll be there. Just make sure she is."


	24. Chapter 24

Okay, you guys get this chapter quickly because, once again, Mulder is really fun to write at this part of the next chapter will probably be a bit of a wait though.

I realized as I proofread that I snuck in a favorite line from the show. Oops! (not sorry)

X

X

X

3:52 a.m.

"You sure you won't let us follow you?" Frohike asked as Mulder stood, putting his coat on. Byers and Langly watched solemnly from across the room, still half-heartedly poring over the evidence.

"There's no help that you could offer me that wouldn't endanger both our lives, and Scully's," Mulder said patiently, having already answered this question in a multitude of forms since he'd shared his plan, or lack thereof, with his companions.

Frohike made a wordless noise of frustration. Mulder softened a bit, knowing that his friend felt almost as worried and helpless as he himself did. Frohike had nursed a soft spot for Scully for years, and Mulder knew he cared deeply for her.

"Frohike, you've already helped us more than I can thank you for," he said, looking sincerely down at his old friend. "If you want to help now, keep trying to find another way to neutralize this toxin. There's no guarantee I'll come back with the antidote."

"There's no guarantee that you'll come back at all," Frohike grumbled unhappily. He understood why Mulder had to go alone, but that didn't mean that he liked it.

"This guy snuck a gun on me once before, and I have no intention of letting him do it a second time," Mulder assured him. "But if something does happen, you guys still have to help Scully. Coordinate with Skinner and Dr. Hilton; if you don't hear from me by 6:00, tell her to take your most promising lead and run with it. It may be Scully's last chance."

Mulder pulled his coat over his shoulders and headed for the door. Frohike gave him a quick nod.

"Be careful, buddy."

XXX

Mulder's hands clenched the steering wheel tightly as he drove, sweat slicking the vinyl beneath his palms. It had been a long drive to be alone with his thoughts.

Every instinct, every rule of negotiations he'd learned in his years with the Bureau, screamed against what he was about to do. He tried to shake the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, knowing that regardless of the odds, he would do it anyway. He had no choice.

As he pulled slowly up to the carpool lot, Mulder took a careful mental inventory of his surroundings. Two cars were already parked, several spaces apart on the other side of the lot. At least a hundred spaces sprawled, unclaimed, across the wide concrete expanse.

Past the two cars, an artificial hill rose, supporting the ramp of a four-lane overpass. Rush hour would not yet be in full swing for another hour, so the early-morning traffic trickled by sparsely, the few vehicles that passed taking no notice of the goings-on in a near-empty parking lot.

On the other side of the overpass, the first beginnings of dawn light were just starting to creep over the low hills, giving a cold, colorless cast to the landscape.

Mulder did a slow lap of the lot, unconsciously putting a hand to his chest as he surveyed the two cars. The small, hard rectangle of plastic in his breast pocket pressed against his ribs where his heart was thumping at a slightly elevated pace. The two cars appeared empty, and the nearest buildings were a row of modest houses on a side road a quarter mile back.

Around the lot, there was very little cover; ragged clumps of tall, brown grass rose from the softly sloping ground, and the few trees he could see were too far away to offer any hiding, or too small. It seemed that there was no one here yet.

Mulder picked a spot in the middle of the lot, where he had a good view of the surrounding area, and waited. The digital clock on the dashboard read 4:48. He was early.

Having laid a reassuring touch on the security tape in his pocket- Scully's lifeline; Mulder reached now to feel for the SIG at his hip- his lifeline. Not lowering his eyes from the lot, Mulder pulled the gun from its holster and checked the clip. Its weight in his hand was a comfort, so he left it there. He might be needing it soon enough, anyway.

At 4:58, another vehicle pulled into the lot. Mulder's stomach twisted uneasily as he saw that it was a large cargo van, windowless except for the driver and passenger seats, which were both occupied. Even if there was no one else in the van, he was already outnumbered.

The van pulled into a spot across from him, only one row over. The man in the passenger seat, Mulder recognized as Richard Brontman. For a moment, neither party moved, simply staring at one another from across 15 yards of concrete.

Finally, his gut telling him all the while not to, Mulder stepped out of the car. He let the gun hang loosely by his side in his right hand, making its presence known to the men in the car.

Brontman followed suit, though the driver stayed put. No other men exited the vehicle, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Brontman appeared both unarmed and unfazed by the fact that Mulder was; the two men walked towards each other slowly, stopping about ten feet apart.

"How many men you got in there?" Mulder asked, breaking the silence and nodding toward the van. Unconsciously, he gripped the gun a little tighter.

He expected his question to be answered with a smirk or some snide remark; however Brontman's demeanor was entirely serious, lacking in the smugness that Mulder had come to expect from him.

"Just one more, besides the driver," he glanced down at the firearm clenched in Mulder's hand. "I understand your wariness, but we don't intend to ambush you."

Mulder gave a short, dry laugh. "You know, I don't trust you as far as I could throw you," he said bluntly. "Why don't you just give me what I came for and we can both be on our way."

At this, Brontman gave a rueful smile. "You of all people should know it's not that simple, Mulder. I need certain assurances."

Understanding this to mean that he wanted to see the tape, Mulder pulled it from his pocket, holding it up in front of him. After Brontman got a good look, he put it back.

"Your turn," Mulder said, his voice a carefully calculated challenge. "I'm still not convinced that a cure even exists. Show it to me now or I'm out of here."

"I doubt you'd take off that easily, seeing as you have no other way to save your partner," Brontman said, some of the smugness that Mulder had anticipated creeping into his voice. "I assure you, it exists. But you'll have to come on a short drive with me to get it."

He gestured behind him to the van.

Mulder tensed noticeably. He had not anticipated this.

"That wasn't part of the deal," he said, agitated. "I get in that van, it'll be so one of your guys can put a bullet in my head and find a nice country ditch to dump me in. No thanks."

Brontman shook his head, smiling slightly.

"No one's going to shoot you," he promised. "I just need to check and make sure you haven't tried to make a copy of that tape, as well as make sure it is the footage you stole. The equipment we'll use to confirm these things is waiting just down the road, conveniently. Afterward, if you've been true to your word, I will be true to mine."

Mulder's finger twitched on the trigger again, not going unnoticed.

"You'll gain nothing by trying to kill me," Brontman said knowingly. "The medicine you need is with the equipment I need. We've got to go together, or nobody gets what they want."

"Alright, how about I just follow you in my car?" Mulder challenged.

Brontman only shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't have you see where we're going. Wouldn't be good business to let you know more than the far too much you already do."

Mulder swallowed. He didn't need to think about Scully to harden his resolve, but she intruded in his thoughts anyway. The clock was ticking; her body was even now turning quickly against her.

After a moment, he nodded, walking the remaining distance to Brontman, who fell in step beside him until they got to the van. The side door slid open as they approached, a man dressed in indiscriminate blacks seated inside. Mulder turned to Brontman before getting in.

"Your men try anything, and you're the first one I'll shoot."

He ducked his head to step into the van, sitting gingerly on the long bench seat as far away from the other man as he could. The door slid closed and Brontman moved around to the passenger side door.

"You'll need to put that on," he said as he climbed in, not turning to face Mulder as he spoke. The man in the backseat held up a wad of dark cloth, and Mulder tensed again. It was a hood. In his other hand, the man held a gun casually down on his lap, mirroring Mulder's own show of force.

"And you'll want to put your weapon away."

Mulder glared at Brontman in the rearview mirror, making no move to do as he was asked. His breath became heavy as his pulse quickened.

"It's very simple, really," Brontman said, meeting Mulder's eyes in the mirror. "You put the hood on, or you and your partner both die. I can wait here all day, but I don't think you have that kind of time."

Teeth clenching in anger, Mulder holstered his weapon, instantly feeling naked without it. As he slipped the hood over his head, the feeling of vulnerability increased tenfold. Inside the scratchy, dark fabric, Mulder fought to steady his breathing as his heart picked up tempo in his chest.

No sooner had he blacked the world out, the van started moving.

The drive was short, as Brontman had promised, but the whole way Mulder had to clench his hands at his sides to keep from tearing the hood off to look around. The presence of the man with the gun a foot to his left kept his nerves high strung, the hair on the back his neck standing up like that of a spooked animal.

He guessed they'd been driving for a few miles when the vehicle started to decelerate.

"Inside jacket pocket," Brontman said as the van came to a stop. Mulder fought the urge to lash out with a clenched fist as the man beside him reached inside his coat for the tape. Instead, he kept both hands firmly on either side of his lap, his whole body bristling with anxiety.

This was it; his last safeguard was gone. If they were going to kill him, it would be now.

"I'll be back in a few minutes, Agent Mulder. If you try anything, my friend here will shoot you." Mulder heard the door open and close, then silence, but for the breathing of the driver and the gunman.

After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened again.

"I appreciate your not trying to deceive me," Brontman said. "The video was genuine and no copies were made. I've just had it destroyed."

The itch to tear the hood off grew stronger. "And the medicine?" Mulder asked tensely.

"You'll have it in a moment." The van started moving again.

 _I was wrong before,_ Mulder thought. _They wouldn't kill me before they knew if the tape was real, in case I could tell them where the copies were. Now that the only proof we had is gone, they're going to take me out to some field and put a bullet between my eyes._

His stomach twisted into a terrible knot, fear and guilt washing over him as he realized that he'd failed. Still, he had to get back to her. There could still be a chance….and even if there wasn't, he had to be there. He'd promised.

Mulder's mind was racing to figure out how to escape, his mental gears turning so desperately that he almost didn't notice the van slow again.

The hood was yanked suddenly from his head, and Mulder found himself momentarily blinded as his eyes readjusted to the light. Brontman had turned to face him from the passenger seat. In one hand, he held a tiny vial, unlabeled but containing several milliliters of clear liquid.

"Your cell phone, Mulder," He said, holding out the other hand.

Warily, Mulder dug out his phone and placed it in the man's hand. In return, Brontman held the vial out to him. Mulder took it delicately, turning it over in his hand once before tucking it carefully in his pocket. He regarded the doctor suspiciously, knowing that the clear liquid may turn out to be nothing more than sugar water.

The van came to a stop at the side of the road and Mulder knew his time with Brontman was up. So he fixed the man with a steely gaze, wanting to impart his final words with deadly sincerity.

"I know you think that everything you've done, all the people you've hurt, have been in the name of science and progress," he said coldly. "And who knows, maybe you did have a change of heart that made you want to save one woman's life instead of destroy it, but I won't believe that until I see it. If this was all a lie, I want you to know that all your powerful friends and government connections can't help you. If Scully dies, I will kill you."

Brontman stared at him for a moment, his expression, for once, unreadable.

"She won't die," he said, nodding towards the door. "As long as you get to her in time. Good luck."

As further incentive, the gunman raised his weapon, pointing it at Mulder's head. He didn't need to be told twice; yanking the door open, he tumbled out onto the side of the road, and the van sped off, leaving a cloud of exhaust behind on the frosty air.

Only when it had made a turn and disappeared did Mulder realize that he was not at the carpool lot. The crumbling, two-lane highway stretched lazily out before him and behind him, leading from nowhere to nowhere. Mulder did a frantic about-face, seeing nothing familiar on any side. The sun had partially risen by now, but under its growing light the landscape had nothing to show him but pavement, trees, and tall grass stirring indifferently under the chilly breeze.


	25. Chapter 25

Forgive me, readers. I am apparently incapable of writing anything besides angst and torturous cliffhangers.

However, the end is now in sight. Stick with me for a few more chapters.

I'll leave you back with poor Mulder, who just can't seem to win.

 _X_

 _X_

 _X_

 _No._

Mulder spun around again, looking for anything that might indicate which direction he needed to go. His hands began to shake.

He closed his eyes, retracing the movements he'd registered, blindfolded, in the back of the van.

 _West_. They'd been heading west at first. Mulder had done his best to pay attention to the subtle shifts in momentum, forming a blurry mental map of their route in case he ended up having to make a quick escape.

 _West. Then a right turn, so north._ The road had wound a bit before they reached their destination, and this one was fairly straight, so he could assume that they'd taken a different route away from wherever they'd been.

He opened his eyes again. Judging by the position of the newly-risen sun, the road ran southeast. It was a start in the right direction, and he took off at a brisk jog down the dusty shoulder. As soon as any houses or buildings came into view, he'd call the local police for a ride back to the hospital.

As he ran, Mulder checked his watch. 5:28. He'd told Frohike not to wait for him past 6:00. In his desperation to make sure they tried everything, Mulder had glossed over the risks. But now, with no way of telling them that he had the antidote, he knew that it was very possible that one more wrong medicine could kill Scully before he got to her.

The cold air burned in Mulder's lungs as he ran, but after a few minutes, his salvation came in the sound of a quickly approaching vehicle. Turning, he saw a small red car coming up the road; before it could pass him, he ran into the road, waving his arms. When the car slowed and pulled up beside him, Mulder ran to the driver's window, pulling out his badge and pressing it to the glass. Without waiting for any acknowledgement or response, Mulder moved around to the passenger side door. An empty McDonald's bag crunched under his feet as he got in the car.

The car's driver, a freckly, bewildered-looking man of about 25, stared at Mulder with wide eyes.

"I'm Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI," Mulder said patiently, still holding out his badge for the man to see. "I need you to drive me to the hospital as quickly as you can. Don't worry about speeding. A woman may die if I don't get there fast enough."

"Y-yeah, alright," the man stammered, hitting the gas. The little car wasn't in great shape, but it sped off well enough. Mulder took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He was going to get there in time. This would all be over soon enough.

"How far away is it?" Mulder asked after a minute, his anxiety getting the better of him.

The young man glanced nervously sideways at him.

"Um, another few miles," he said, pushing the car a little faster. "So….just curious, if you were trying to get to the hospital, how'd you end up all the way out here on foot?"

Mulder studied the young man for a moment before responding.

"I'm afraid that's classified," he said tensely. "But it was certainly not my intent. I was very fortunate that you happened by."

The young man chuckled nervously, seeming to relax a little at that. "Hey, anything I can do to help your...mission, or assignment, or whatever."

"I'm not on an assignment," Mulder sighed, running a hand over his face. "The woman in the hospital is my partner."

"Oh…" the man said, turning his attention back to the road. "Is she...what happened? Also classified?"

"Also classified," Mulder murmured, watching empty fields rush past his window. "But I suppose you could say she was injured in the line of duty."

"Ah...well, we'll be there soon." They spent the rest of the drive in silence. Mulder found himself reaching into his pocket to check that the vial was still there, still sealed and safe.

When the hospital came into view, Mulder directed the driver around to the back door near Scully's secret room. With one hand on the doorknob, Mulder turned to the driver one more time.

"What's your name?"

"Jay."

As the car came to a stop at the curb, Mulder stepped out. "I owe you one, Jay." Then he shut the door and hurried into the hospital.

By the time he came to Scully's door, he was half-running. He lurched into the room unceremoniously, catching himself on the doorframe to slow down, suddenly unsure of what to expect.

Scully was the room's lone occupant, lying still on the partially-reclined bed with sheets pulled up over her chest, which rose and fell gently with her shallow breaths.

Momentarily, Mulder wondered where Skinner and Dr. Hilton were; they were supposed to be looking after her. However, all thoughts flew from his mind as Scully's head turned to his approach.

"Scully," he breathed, taking the remaining steps to her bedside. "I've got it- well, we'll have to check it out to make sure it's what he says it is, but-"

"Mulder," Scully cut him off, and he noticed that her eyes were wide with alarm. "Mulder, what's going on? Why am I tied up again?"

Mulder looked down to see Scully's hands clenched into nervous fists beneath the thick leather straps that once again secured her wrists.

"Wha- I… I don't know, Scully," Mulder stammered, confused and taken aback.

"I must have passed out," she said, still looking troubled. "I woke up a few minutes ago and Skinner and Shelly were both gone. I don't remember anything happening, but what if I blacked out and hurt someone again? What if I lost my memories, like with you?" Her voice was rising in panic.

Mulder crouched by the bedside, taking her face in his hands. "Hey, it's okay," he said softly, trying to calm her. "We don't know what happened yet. I'm sure they're both fine. I'm going to try to find them and then we'll get this whole thing over with. Let me get you out of these."

As he reached to unfasten the heavy restraints, however, Shelly came through the door, looking nervous. Mulder stood and turned to her.

"Good, you're back," Shelly said before he could speak. "Do you have it?"

Mulder reached into his pocket, pulling out the tiny vial.

"Shelly, what happened? Why was Scully restrained again?"

She shook her head, moving around to the other side of the bed. "No time to explain. Right now, I need to get her that medicine." She held out her hand, and Mulder put the vial in it. After giving the little bottle a cursory examination, Shelly slipped it into the inner pocket of her lab coat.

"What are you-"

Behind him, Mulder heard the door open again, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Scully tense.

"Mulder!" she cried out in warning, and he whipped around, reaching for his weapon. It was too late, though. He turned right into the barrel of another gun, raised to the level of his head.

Darryl Hunt stepped the rest of the way into the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

"Keep your hands where I can see them, Agent Mulder."

Mulder slowly took his hand off his gun, raising both arms slightly away from his body and stealing a sideways glance at Scully. Her gaze was fixed on Hunt; her already pallid complexion had paled even further, giving her the appearance of a ghost. As Mulder raised his arms in surrender, she turned to Dr. Hilton, her fists clenched beneath the thick restraints.

"Shelly, what is this?" Scully demanded, her voice shaking slightly.

Shelly didn't answer at first, moving instead to confiscate Mulder's gun. He fixed her with a burning glare, though she refused to meet either of their eyes. Mulder felt his stomach turn sickeningly at her betrayal.

"Dr. Hilton has been a part of one of my research teams for several years now," Hunt said slyly as Shelly crossed the room to place Mulder's gun on a desk, far out of reach. "She did well in keeping you here for us to study, though I'm afraid she knew that we could never let either of you live to see your investigation through."

Shelly walked back to stand beside Mulder, looking down at Scully.

"I'm sorry Dana," she said quietly. "You should have stayed away from this."

Scully forced herself to meet Shelly's eyes, and Mulder saw that her own with shining with unshed tears.

"How could you do this?" she forced out, her voice thick with desperation and rage. Shelly made no answer, instead turning back to Hunt for direction.

Suddenly, Mulder's heart dropped as he had a terrible thought.

"Where's Skinner?" he demanded, looking from Hunt to Shelly and back. The Assistant Director had sworn to stay by Scully's side until Mulder returned, and he wouldn't have left without cause...or without putting up a fight. Glancing around the room, Mulder saw no signs of a struggle.

Shelly dragged her eyes up from the floor to meet his gaze, seeming to choose her words carefully.

"He's…..out of our way."

Mulder stole another glance at Scully, who met his eyes with an expression of barely-contained horror. The sinking feeling in his gut intensified.

Hunt took another step towards Mulder, the nose of the gun practically nudging his neck.

"It's like Dr. Hilton said; you should have stayed away from this." He looked at Mulder with a peculiar and unsettling kind of curiosity, as if he were a fascinating new species of bug.

"As much as I would love gaining the scientific perspective of comparing the effects of the drug on Agent Scully to its effects on you, Agent Mulder, I'm afraid we just don't have that kind of time, and you have been attracting too much attention to risk it."

Hunt shifted his gaze to Shelly, giving her a short nod.

Mulder watched with growing unease as Shelly crossed the room to the cabinet of medical supplies, selecting and uncapping a fresh syringe. From another pocket of her lab coat, she withdrew another small vial, slightly different in shape than the one Mulder had gotten from Brontman. Its contents were similarly clear, though not as viscous.

From her makeshift prison on the bed, Scully grew tense as she watched Shelly draw the contents of the vial into the syringe.

 _They mean to kill him,_ she realized, and started pulling against the restraints, trying to squeeze her petite hands through the loops. When that didn't work, she strained her fingers to the side, trying to reach the buckle mechanism to loosen it. Her reach fell centimeters short.

"By nature, our work must be conducted in secret," Hunt continued as Shelly worked. "So unfortunately, we've had to develop certain failsafes...ways to discreetly remove any potential sources of exposure. You've done a pretty good job of marking yourself as a potential source of exposure, wouldn't you say, Agent Mulder?"

Mulder made no response, lifting his head a little higher and glaring past Hunt indifferently.

"The solution that Dr. Hilton is holding is not as new or exciting as what was given to Agent Scully, but it is, nevertheless, quite effective. It will stop a person's heart in under a minute, leaving no trace so long as the puncture is well hidden."

Scully's stomach twisted at this, her heart beating a frantic cadence against her chest.

"Don't do this, Shelly," she pleaded, trying to keep her voice steady. "There are other ways to end this. Please."

"It will be painless," Hunt drawled as Shelly ignored her words. "Though I'm afraid I can't say the same for you, Agent Scully."

At that Mulder bristled, speaking for the first time since he'd thought of Skinner.

"You have nothing to gain by killing us," he spat. "Two federal agents dead on top of a dozen bodies that can already be traced to you? You struck me as an intelligent man, Dr. Hunt."

"He's right," Scully said, breathing heavily as she continued to test the straps that held her. "There are other people at the Bureau that know enough about what we were doing to put the pieces together."

"Your bodies are easier to deal with than your testimony," Hunt said coldly, and Shelly joined him from across the room, syringe in hand.

Scully found her partner's eyes and for a fraction of a second they shared a glance that spoke hundreds of words.

"Shelly, please don't do this," she begged again, trying to intercept her friend's gaze. "Please don't- NO!"

Hunt grabbed Mulder by the arm, pressing the gun under his ear and twisting his hand behind his back. Mulder struggled, but in the end Hunt forced him down over one of the equipment carts that stood beside the bed.

Mulder's heart fluttered frantically at his ribs as they forced him down, as if it was trying to escape from the body it knew was doomed. His breath came in short, labored pants as he tried to push himself back up, but with only one arm it was futile. With his face pressed against the cold metal of the table, his eyes were almost on level with Scully's where she sat, helpless, feet away, yelling his name as she strained against her bonds.

When Hunt had Mulder under control, Shelly moved in, grabbing a fistful of his hair with one hand to force his head forward. She inserted the needle just above the hairline at the back of his neck, in the hollow beneath his skull. When she'd pushed the plunger down and withdrawn the needle, Hunt released his hold.

Scully ceased her struggles and fell still, feeling as though her own heart had stopped.

Mulder felt the prick in his neck, followed by a foggy cold that spread from the tiny puncture and throughout his body. When the hands holding him disappeared, he collapsed against the table, trying to pull himself back up. All he managed was to slide down from it, catching himself on the edge of the bed on his way to the floor.

His hand brushed her leg as he clutched at the sheets, trying hopelessly to regain his feet. As his vision darkened he found her eyes, fixed on his and spilling over with tears.

"Scul-"

The second syllable of her name caught in his throat, turning into a soft groan as he slumped to the floor.

Scully's lips moved soundlessly, her mouth forming around the words that couldn't break through her trembling gasps for breath as she stared in disbelief at the spot where her partner had collapsed.

Since the words wouldn't leave her lips aloud, they echoed, anguished, in her head.

 _No, no, no_

 _This isn't happening_

 _Please, God, no_

From where she was bound to the bed, she could still see part of Mulder's face and his outstretched arm, awkwardly bent across the cold tile. His eyes were closed and his body still.

Hunt walked slowly over to where his victim had fallen, nudging him apathetically with the toe of his shoe. Mulder's eyelids fluttered weakly as his head lolled to the side, but otherwise he made no response.

"Don't touch him!" Scully hissed, snapping out of it to lurch at Hunt against her restraints. Tears spilled over to run unchecked down her cheeks, clearing her blurred vision of the nightmare before her.

Hunt turned, looking at her as if noticing her for the first time. After studying her for a moment, his expression blank, he turned to Shelly.

"Good work," he said, his tone businesslike and indifferent. "He'll be gone in a matter of moments. A team will be here to pick him up shortly; they'll rush him to urgent care as a cardiac arrest case, but it will be too late to resuscitate."

Scully sat taut against her aching wrists, chest heaving in near-hyperventilation as she glared hatefully at her captor. Her gaze returned to Mulder as he said this, desperately searching him for signs of life. Her throat closed around a sob, not letting it surface to be heard.

"As for her…" Hunt continued, and though Scully could feel his eyes she refused to lift hers to look at him. "Keep her restrained here until her symptoms have advanced into the final stages. It shouldn't be long now. When she's unconscious or too far gone to talk, take her into general hospital to die. Let some young doctor try to save her, should make the whole thing more believable. Contact me when it's over."

Shelly nodded, and Hunt left the room without another word.


	26. Chapter 26

Wish I could say I'm sorry for that last chapter...Your reactions were great, though. (haha sorry Howling2themoon)

I was able to grind out this chapter because I didn't want to leave you guys hanging for too long, but after this I'm a little stuck.

Your feedback has guided me beautifully throughout this story, so please review to help me write!

I'm a day behind in my revival series watching, so maybe seeing episode 2 tonight will inspire me! Fingers crossed.

Anyway, read on and maybe you can have Mulder back.

Maybe.

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For a moment, time in the little hospital room seemed to have stopped.

Mulder lifeless on the floor; Scully frozen in her grief and her anger; Shelly staring at the door through which Dr. Hunt had just vanished. After a few seconds, and without a glance at either agent, she slipped out into the hall as well.

The soft click of the door falling shut somehow broke through Scully's horrified paralysis, and her mind started working rapidly through her predicament in the only way it knew how.

 _I've got to get loose_ , she thought desperately, straining to see Mulder on the floor beside her bed.

 _He's strong, in reality he probably has a few minutes, and then a few more to restart his heart before brain death occurs…_

She called his name several times, her voice sounding choked and foreign to her own ears. He didn't stir.

Scully clenched her fists, repeating the same futile escape attempts, all the while feeling herself crumble into hysterics. She was feet away from him, yet there was nothing she could do.

Finally, though in reality only a few seconds had passed, Shelly strode quickly back into the room and straight to the medical cabinet. She returned to the bedside with a fresh, empty syringe.

Seeing this, Scully immediately recoiled, pressing back against the raised upper half of the bed.

"Stay away from me!" She snarled, her voice breaking.

Shelly paid her no heed, drawing the contents of the vial Mulder had produced into the syringe.

When she came around to the side of the bed with the needle outstretched, Scully twisted against the restraints, trying to kick it out of her hand.

"I said stay away!"

Shelly jerked away, narrowly avoiding Scully's aimed kick.

"Dana, this is going to save your life," she hissed in a whisper, as if she were afraid that someone would hear. "Now hold still."

Scully only jerked harder against the unyielding fetters, sickened by the thought of her friend's betrayal.

"Dana!" Shelly said, more sharply this time. With one arm she held Scully's legs down. "Without this medicine, you'll die. I promise, I'm not going to hurt you."

"You expect me to believe anything you say, you lying bitch?" Scully choked, knowing that her struggles were in vain. "After what you've done to Mulder?"

She couldn't bring herself to use the word 'kill', because that would be acknowledging that he was dead, something that Scully could not cope with right now, or ever.

Scully watched helplessly as the syringe found a puncture-free patch of vein in the crook of her left arm, crying out as the needle slid beneath her skin. When the chamber was empty, Shelly withdrew the needle and set the syringe on the cart next to the bed. Scully fell back against the mattress, trying not to break down.

Turning her back on her patient, Shelly moved to where Mulder lay and crouched beside his head.

"Don't….touch him!" Scully growled as she had at Hunt, tears once again welling in her eyes.

Shelly stood, stepping back to the bed. "He's not dead," she said quietly. "Just unconscious."

 _What?_ Scully's head was swimming, and not just from the indeterminable loyalties of the woman who stood before her. Before she could voice her doubts, Scully realized that she felt truly strange. A piercing pain in her head all but confirmed her fears that her time was up.

"At least Dr. Hunt was considerate enough to warn me that it would hurt like hell," Scully said accusingly through clenched teeth as the pain abated and then swelled again.

Shelly crossed to the other side of the bed, watching the collection of monitors carefully.

"No, that means the antidote is working," she said as her eyes flicked from screen to screen. "The neurotoxin's bonds are breaking down. Temporarily increased blood flow can create swelling and acute head pain. It should subside in a moment."

She turned back to Scully, looking frightened and ashamed.

"Dana, I know I have no right to ask this, but I need you to trust me," she said, her eyes pleading. Scully clenched her own eyes shut against another wave of lancing pain.

"We need to get out of here before they come back, or we'll all be dead."

Scully opened her eyes again, grudgingly meeting Shelly's for the first time. "Alright," she said quietly, sounding confused and defeated. "But I'm not sure how fast I'll be able to move. Untie me."

Shelly gave a small sigh of relief, moving quickly to release the heavy buckles on the straps that held Scully to the bed. "I promise I'll explain everyth-"

As soon as both her hands were freed, Scully sat forward in one quick motion, simultaneously pulling Mulder's gun from where it had slid down behind the pillow at her back.

"Step back and put your hands where I can see them," she commanded coldly, holding the gun firmly in both hands, trained on Shelly's head.

As the doctor carefully took a step backwards, arms raised, Scully switched the gun to her left hand, using her right to quickly rip away the wires that connected her to the heart monitor. She winced slightly as she tore the IV tube from the back of her left hand, then kicked away the sheets and slid off the bed. For a moment she felt unsteady on her feet, but adrenaline kept her upright and she moved quickly around the bed to where Mulder lay.

"Don't move," Scully said fiercely, her eyes deadly serious as she knelt beside her partner's motionless form.

"I won't move," Shelly promised in a whisper, looking terrified.

Still holding the gun up, Scully turned her attention to Mulder. She wanted desperately to believe what Shelly was saying, but she didn't trust anything beside her own senses right now, and even those were still feeling pretty rocky.

With bated breath and a shaky hand, Scully fumbled two practiced fingers to her partner's throat, feeling for the push of blood being pumped through his jugular vein. Her relief tore its way up through her throat in a ragged gasp as she felt his heartbeat, steady and strong.

"Mulder," she breathed, leaning close over him to watch his face for any response. "Mulder, can you hear me?" She shook him slightly, but to no effect. Placing one hand on his chest to feel the reassuring warmth and heartbeat, Scully turned her attention back to Shelly. She still held the gun, though not aimed so precisely.

"What did you inject him with?" she demanded.

Shelly lowered her arms slightly. "Methohexital. I swapped the vials when Dr. Hunt wasn't paying attention. The intended poison is in the cabinet over there. It should be destroyed."

Scully stared warily at her for a moment, still untrusting. She glanced back at Mulder's unconscious form almost for reassurance.

"It was somewhere in the area of a double dosage," Shelly said, trying to further convince Scully of her sincerity. "I needed to be sure he wouldn't come to with Hunt still in the room. He'll be awake and fine in probably under an hour. But right now, none of us will be fine unless we get out of here."

After another moment of hesitation, Scully gritted her teeth and tucked the gun into the waistband of her pants, lacking a proper holster and not wanting to proceed unarmed.

Shelly immediately strode across the room to the collapsible wheeled stretcher she'd used to bring Scully in. She rolled it alongside Mulder's body and retracted the frame to its shortest height.

Scully rolled her partner sideways, sliding an arm behind his back to lift him onto the gurney.

"Dana, let me help, you shouldn't be moving this much yet," Shelly offered, a little afraid to reach between them without consent. The way that Scully seemed to be positioning her tiny body around Mulder's much larger, vulnerable form would have been almost comical if not for the fierce, animalistic protectiveness she was exuding. Shelly had the sense that if she wasn't careful, she'd be met not with a third iteration of 'Don't Touch Him' but with a bullet in the leg.

"I've got him," Scully replied tightly, straining slightly but still managing to maneuver Mulder's head and shoulders up onto the platform. His legs and arms were easier, and when he was centered, she crossed one strap loosely across chest and another at his legs, just to ensure that he wouldn't fall off. She left the buckles half-done in case this was still a trap; in case they got separated and Mulder needed to free himself. This detail was not lost on Shelly, but she wisely remained silent.

When Mulder was securely on top, Shelly reached to re-extend the wheeled legs of the stretcher, bringing it up to waist height.

Despite Scully's completely transparent desire to be in control of the situation, Shelly cut in to push. Regardless of the helpful presence of adrenaline in her bloodstream, Scully was still incredibly weakened. The last thing either of them needed was for her to collapse mid-escape attempt.

Biting her tongue, Scully fell in step beside the stretcher, one hand on Mulder's arm as they wheeled it out the door and into the hallway. For the moment, their unused little wing of the hospital remained empty, but from what Hunt had said, they had very little time before fake EMTs showed up to collect Mulder's body. What would happen when they found the room empty, she didn't know- or particularly want to find out.

"Do you have a plan?" she asked tensely, glancing sideways at Shelly with a look that was far from trusting. When Hunt and his men figured out they'd been tricked, it didn't seem very likely that they'd just turn around and go home.

Shelly didn't answer at first, deftly swinging the stretcher around a corner. It calmed Scully's nerves a little to see actual hospital personnel walking at the end of the corridor. Even in the unlikely case that every single nurse and orderly was covertly employed by Dr. Hunt, there were still civilian patients as witnesses, providing a thin shield of protection.

"I'm kind of making it up as we go," Shelly said with a grimace as they pushed through a set of swinging doors into another wing of the hospital. "I only had a few minutes' warning that he was coming. No time to call in the cavalry if I was going to keep you two alive."

"And yourself," Scully said bitterly, slowly understanding her friend's role in the larger operation.

Shelly glanced up, the tone of Scully's words not lost on her. "And myself," she agreed quietly.

The came to a hall of small examination rooms, most occupied by nurses and non-critical patients. Shelly stopped to talk briefly with a nurse in one of the rooms, letting her know that they'd be occupying the next room over until further notice.

When they'd wheeled Mulder inside, Scully turned back to the doctor, anxious for answers.

"What now?" she asked, perhaps a little too harshly. "Either Hunt and his people are just going to crawl back into the woodwork, or they're going to send more people to try to kill us."

"Most likely the latter," Shelly admitted miserably. "Just stay with your partner for now." She turned to move towards the door.

"Wait!" Scully grabbed her by the wrist. "You've barely explained anything. Where are you going?"

"I'm going to get Agent Skinner, and some backup." She paused, unsure what response her next words would get. "Once they find out what I did, I won't be safe until your people blow the lid on the whole operation. I don't want to waste any time in making that happen."

Scully released her wrist, but her eyes remained wary.

"How do I know you won't give us up?" she demanded. "Turn us over to him to save your own skin?"

Shelly sighed, looking years older than she was in that instant.

"I have enough to answer for already," she said quietly. "I won't have your blood on my hands."

With one hand on the doorknob, she turned back to Scully.

"I'm going to lock you in," she said, reaching beneath her scrubs for a string of keys that hung on a lanyard around her neck. "The only other person with a key is the nurse I just spoke to, and she won't be using it. You should be hidden well enough until I get back."

She nodded to Mulder.

"If he wakes, get him some water and check that he didn't injure himself when he fell. Otherwise, he'll be fine. I'm….sorry I put you through that, Dana."

Scully held her gaze, her throat feeling tight. The horror and heartbreak that she had felt was unforgivable.

"We're all sorry for something," she said quietly.

Shelly turned and slipped out the door, locking it behind her with a faint rattle of keys.

When she was gone, Scully turned back to her unconscious partner, nervously checking his pulse again. It was still as strong as ever, and each beat beneath her fingertips helped to calm her just a little bit more.

Anxious to see his eyes open again, Scully hovered at his head, one hand running gently over his forehead and hair. Though the gesture was lost on Mulder, who remained unresponsive, it was soothing to her. When her heart rate had finally settled and her hands stopped shaking, Scully consented to herself to sit tight and wait.

She wheeled the stretcher over to the room's lone piece of furniture, a garishly-patterned armchair, and sank into it exhaustedly. As she let her eyes close, she reached up to grasp Mulder's hand so that should she pass out or fall asleep, she'd wake when he did.

Neither sleep nor unconsciousness came, but Scully's grip remained, a much-needed anchor to the warmth of his hand and the pulse in his veins.


	27. Chapter 27

This chapter was written at 4am, so it might be terrible. I do remember that I didn't really give it an ending, because this scene will continue when I have some goddamn coffee. But I really needed to get it published, so here you go.

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"Well, this would explain why these two aren't answering their phones," Langly grumbled, setting Scully and Skinner's cell phones back on the table beside the empty hospital bed.

"Doesn't tell us anything about what happened to Mulder, though," Frohike replied, troubled. He gave the little hospital room another once-over, not finding any further clues.

After Mulder had left to meet up with Dr. Brontman, the Gunmen had given him a slight head start before heading out after him. By the time they casually drove past the carpool lot, Mulder's car was the only one parked there- empty. Fearing the worst, they'd turned around to book it to the hospital, meanwhile trying to reach the FBI agents to find out what had happened.

"Maybe they needed to move to a different room for some reason," Byers offered unenthusiastically. "We should at least take a look around."

The other two agreed and they all stepped out into the hallway. Leaving Scully's empty room behind them, they moved further into the hospital. Just before they rounded the corner, noise behind them made the three friends turn in unison. A team of four emergency medical personnel were rushing into the room they had just left.

"Woah," Frohike said under his breath, ushering Langly and Byers around the corner before they were spotted. "Those did not look like friendlies. We gotta hide."

There was only one door near enough to try, and when Frohike rattled the handle he found it locked. "Byers, picks, quick!" He hissed, hearing footsteps approaching from the adjacent hall.

Byers quickly knelt by the door handle, whipping out the small set of lockpicks that he'd brought along just in case something like this were to happen. In a matter of moments, he had disengaged the locking mechanism inside the handle. Quickly they all slipped inside, not bothering to check what room they'd broken into. All three men held their breaths as they pressed against the door, straining to hear the sound of footsteps receding down the hall.

"Hey!" a voice hissed in a whisper behind them, making all three men jump. "A little help?"

The room that they'd broken into was not a room at all, but a storage closet. Sitting against a metal shelf several feet away, his hands cuffed to the shelf above his head, was Walter Skinner.

"Skinner?" Frohike sputtered. "What the hell is going on? Where are Mulder and Scully?"

"I have no idea, but they're in danger if they're not already dead," Skinner said bitterly. "Dr. Hilton has been lying to us. She's the one who locked locked me in here. She snuck up on me with some kind of short-term sedative. I think the keys are still in my coat pocket, though. See if you can find them."

Frohike quickly crouched beside him, finding the key ring and counting through till Skinner told him he'd hit the right one. When the cuffs were off, Skinner stood, rubbing his wrists.

"Scully wasn't in the room?" he asked, at a loss of where to look for her and her partner next.

"No, but some sneaky-looking medical types rushed in there right after we walked out," Langly said, hovering by the door. "That's why we ducked in here."

"Well, it's a good thing you did-" Skinner started, cutting off abruptly when the door opened again. When Shelly slipped inside, he reached for his gun, not bothering to think that it might not be there if she'd taken it before locking him in. To his relief, it was still on his hip, and in a matter of moments drawn on the startled doctor.

Frohike, Byers, and Langly moved quickly out of the line of fire as Shelly raised her hands slowly in surrender.

"Agent Skinner, I can explain," she said cautiously, her eyes flicking from him to the Gunmen as she deduced who they were.

"Where's Scully?" He demanded, not lowering his weapon.

"She's safe," Shelly promised. "I administered the antidote not long ago. Her symptoms are already beginning to subside."

Skinner shared a wary glance with Frohike. "And Mulder?"

"He's with Dana in an exam room on the other end of the hospital. Unconscious, but otherwise unharmed."

Skinner's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do I know you're telling the truth? Why lock me in here only to help them?"

Shelly sighed, lowering her hands.

"If they had known you were here, they would have tried to kill you, too," she said impatiently. "I didn't have time to explain then, and I don't now. You're just going to have to trust me, because I need your help."

Still uncertain, Skinner slowly stowed his gun.

"Your agents are safe, but unless you go after Dr. Hunt now, he's going to disappear along with all his research and they'll be left with nothing to close this case on. Many lives will still be in danger if these men aren't prosecuted."

Skinner took a deep breath, still looking wary and unhappy. He turned to Frohike.

"Alright, I'm going to do what she says," he said grudgingly. "I want you guys to get to where she says Mulder and Scully are. If they're not there, or they're not in exactly the conditions she says they are, I want you to call me."

Frohike nodded, eyeing Shelly with distinct mistrust.

Shelly ignored his stare, quickly relaying to Skinner where he was likely to intercept Hunt. She also advised him to have a team dispatched to look for the most likely unmarked ambulance and the false EMT's that had been dispatched to assist with the deception. With a final threatening remark, Skinner ducked quickly out into the hall in pursuit of Dr. Hunt.

"Ok, now take us to Mulder and Scully," Frohike said curtly, holding the door open for Shelly to lead the way.

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Despite the nature and dosage of the sedative, there was no slow, easy drift back into consciousness.

The expected confusion was there, but only for a brief several moments before the temporarily subdued adrenaline ran rampant through his veins again.

For Mulder, the minute or two of partial lucidity before he broke the surface were all confusion, pain, and terrible, gut-wrenching fear, muddy and indiscernible from one another.

He struggled to open his eyes, desperate to understand the source of his terror. For a few moments, everything was as blurry in his vision as it was in his mind, no clear shapes or light coming into focus. But as his heart rate continued to climb from the unidentified anxiety, the effects of the false sleep wore off and his vision cleared slightly.

As he became aware of motion in front of him, he also became aware of a touch at his wrist. His adrenaline spike again, clearing his vision further and bringing the memories of his last few moments of consciousness flooding back.

 _She….killed me_ , he thought, not yet rational enough to realize how insane that sounded. Shelly continued to fumble with something down by his hand, oblivious to his stirring.

 _She injected my neck_ , he thought, struggling to clear the memory and get his situation figured out. The struggle against hands holding him down came easily enough, and the pain of a puncture at the base of his skull. The last thing he'd seen was….

 _Scully!_

Mulder lurched forward at the memory, thinking that if somehow he wasn't dead yet, he could still save her. His hand clamped vice-like on Shelly's forearm, dragging her closer to him as he pulled himself upright.

He realized as his senses instantaneously came the rest of the way into focus that he'd actually yelled his partner's name when he thought of it. Shelly stared at him, wide-eyed, making no move to pull her arm away.

"Where is she?" Mulder hissed, his grip so tight on her arm that his hand shook.

"Easy, Mulder," a familiar voice came from his left, accompanied by a cautious hand on his shoulder. "Let go before you break her arm."

It surprised him enough that he turned, even further confused by the face that greeted him; Melvin Frohike.

Mulder stared at him for a moment, then back at Shelly. "Frohike, what-" He cut himself off short as he slowly noticed his surroundings; a clean, modern hospital room, quite different from the one he'd spent so much time in with Scully. Just outside the open door, a nurse stood looking at a clipboard. As he stared, a young couple walked past chatting.

Before he could reframe his question, Scully's voice broke through the confusion.

"I'm right here, Mulder," she said, relieved amusement playing in her voice as she reassured him.

Mulder's hand fell from Shelly's wrist and he turned as she walked in from the adjoining room he hadn't noticed. In one hand she held a vial of blood. She handed it to Shelly as she came to stand beside the bed. Shelly took the vial and retreated, rubbing her arm as she left the room.

Mulder sat the rest of the way up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed but not yet feeling steady enough to stand. His heart was still racing and his head a little foggy.

"Scully," he breathed, observing her as she came to stand in front of him. She was steady on her feet, and a little color had returned to her cheeks. "Are you….what's- How are you doing?"

He was still a little too shocked to form a coherent thought, but Scully gave him half a smile, knowing what he meant to ask.

"We'll know for sure once Shelly gets my blood to the lab, but it seems like the antidote is working," she said, sitting on the bed next to him. "I'm feeling much better already."

"How….What happened?"

Scully sighed. "It's true that Shelly was working for Hunt indirectly, however she claims that when she learned I'd been….afflicted, she only wanted to help us. Whatever the case, she did save both our lives when Hunt showed up. She played along, but switched the poison he intended for you with a common sedative. Naturally, she couldn't convey any of this to me, so my...performance...when I thought you'd been killed was enough to convince Hunt that he'd won. After he left, she gave me the antidote and got us both out of there."

"What about Skinner?"

"She knew his presence would only complicate things when Hunt showed up, so she locked him in a closet."

"Where we found him," Frohike said, coming around the side of the bed to join the conversation. "After we couldn't get ahold of anyone and found your car empty in the carpool lot."

Mulder looked up as Langly and Byers came to stand beside the bed as well.

"Skinner went after Hunt," Scully continued. "And he had a team sent to look for the men who came to take you. Hospital security didn't find anything, so they must have ran when they saw that you and I weren't in the room. We haven't heard anything yet."

Mulder stared off for a moment, putting all this new information together. After a while he looked up with a tired smile.

"Hey boys, think you could go scrounge up some coffees for us?" he asked, sharing a glance with Frohike. "I have a feeling I'm going to need it."

"Sure thing, Mulder," Frohike said, ushering his two companions out of the room.

When they were gone, Mulder turned slightly to face his partner. For a moment he said nothing, simply studying her.

"You sure you're okay, Scully?" His main concern was her health, but he could tell that she was struggling with herself mentally.

Scully let her eyes close for a moment, willing to let her guard down a little now that it was just Mulder in the room.

"I'm feeling better," she said quietly. "Less….shaky."

Mulder remained silent, waiting for her to continue.

"This…..these last few days have been hard," she said after a minute. "Harder than I'd like to admit. And that moment...with Shelly and Dr. Hunt- that feeling of betrayal and helplessness….I don't know if I can let that go."

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

"I know it shouldn't matter, now that I know we're both safe. But it does. I don't think I can ever forgive her for that."

Her gaze found his and Mulder knew by the haunted look in her eyes that she was right.

With a tiny nod of understanding, he reached out to put a comforting hand at her back. Scully leaned in to the gesture, laying her head against his chest. Mulder let his hand rub gentle circles between her shoulder blades, and after a moment of trying to fight the urge, he placed a tender kiss on top of her head.

"Maybe she doesn't need you to forgive her," he murmured into her hair. "Maybe she just needed to save your life."

Scully said nothing, but remained where she was, taking comfort in her partner's arms and the warmth of his chest against her cheek. _We're safe now. We're both okay._

After a minute, footsteps behind the bed prompted them to straighten up. Turning, Mulder saw that Shelly was walking back into the room, a piece of paper in her hand. With a sad smile, she handed the paper to Scully.

"It went faster now that we knew what to look for," she said. "And it looks like you're clean."

Scully studied the paper for a moment before nodding, not meeting Shelly's eyes.

Mulder gave her an apologetic smile. "Thank you," he said sincerely. Despite the pain and terror her deception had caused, in the end she had saved Scully's life. It was enough for him.


	28. Chapter 28

Sorry I can't seem to stop with the angsty dialogue and hurt/comfort fluff. I reaally did intend to get back to the action/plot in this chapter, but my hormones got the better of me.

I'm losing steam, but still trying to finish this for you guys.

XXX

Now that Mulder was awake and Shelly back in the room, Scully found herself looking uncomfortably between a piece of lint on the shoulder of her partner's jacket to a divot in the wall beside the bed. Though he appeared nonchalant, she could tell that Mulder was watching her carefully out of the corner of his eye. Shelly seemed just to be waiting for someone else to speak.

Unable to avoid their gazes any longer, Scully shifted away from Mulder on the bed, moving to retreat to the adjoining room again. Though she very much wanted to be near him, and frankly no one else at the moment, the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach reminded her again of Shelly's betrayal, and of the minutes of crippling vulnerability the other woman had seen when Scully had thought her partner and closest friend lay dead on the floor at her feet.

It made her want to get away from him, away from them both, to somewhere nobody could see and exploit her weaknesses.

As she slid off the bed and brushed past him, Mulder's hand caught her wrist lightly, stopping her more with his obvious concern than with force.

"Scully, stay a minute," he implored her softly. His eyes were full of silent understanding; he knew why she needed to get away, but was also slightly desperate, offering anything to keep her from shutting off to him. "I-..."

Mulder paused, also acutely aware of their audience. Though he was quicker to forgive, he was not immune to the same feelings that Scully was struggling with. He didn't want to make the whole situation more uncomfortable by dragging their unique intimacy out in front of Shelly while Scully was so miserably trying to bury it.

Scully let him hold onto her wrist for a moment, but her need to flee the room was clear on her face. "I just need to be alone for a while, Mulder," she said quietly.

Mulder let her hand drop, feeling slightly ashamed for trying to keep her there when she clearly wanted to leave. But he'd only just gotten her back, and he hated to see her turn away when he knew she still needed him.

When she'd gone, shutting the door with a soft click, Shelly looked up.

"So what happens now?" she asked tiredly.

Mulder considered this.

"I suppose it depends on what your whole story is," he replied. "Depends on what we manage to hold onto in court, and how deeply involved you were. Your helping Scully and I will play in your favor. If you have other information that may help the prosecution, I'm sure that some kind of deal can be made."

Shelly gave a noncommittal nod, having expected this.

"I guess I have no choice at this point," she said. "I never came forward with anything before because I knew they'd kill me for it. But when it was Dana…" she trailed off.

"You couldn't just play along and let her die." Mulder finished, seeing the doctor's predicament far more easily than Scully had. Whatever misguided sense of progress had lead Shelly to involvement in this project, she had soon realized that to leave was to endanger her life. How conflicted she may have been over three years of experimenting on innocent strangers, he could not say, but when someone she cared about had turned up on a chart that was little more than a death sentence, Shelly could no longer stick to the safe road of inaction.

"Now I have to testify," Shelly continued. "They know that I helped you. The only way I can escape them is to make sure they all get caught." Her face crumpled as she spoke. "But there's no way," she whispered. "I wasn't high up, I wasn't anywhere near Dr. Hunt. There's so much that I don't know, and so much that they've already made disappear."

Mulder stood, feeling more or less normal again, and put a hand on her arm.

"We'll keep you in protective custody while all this is sorted out. Afterward, if it's necessary we can have you relocated, put into a witness protection program."

Shelly put her head in her hands. "I've been so stupid," she said, her voice catching in her throat. "I've made so many terrible mistakes, and innocent people have paid for it. I almost killed you and Dana both."

Mulder rubbed her arm awkwardly. "But you didn't. You saved us. And now you're going to help us end this."

Shelly sniffed, nodding as she raised her head. Her eyes caught on something over Mulder's shoulder and he turned to see the Gunmen filing back into the room, coffees in hand.

"So what's the plan?" Shelly asked, composing herself and straightening up as the three men moved to stand beside them, Frohike handing them each a paper cup. Mulder murmured a word of thanks before taking a sip and trying to reorganize his thoughts.

"Skinner called me a minute ago," Frohike said before he could speak. They think they've tracked Hunt to an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the next city over. Sounds like they're waiting for more intel to make a move."

Mulder straightened up at this, instantly serious. He set his barely-touched coffee on the table and checked himself for his gun and badge. His hand grasped at an empty holster, having forgotten that his weapon had been taken from him by Shelly when she had pretended to kill him. He began to turn to her in question, but Byers stopped him, pulling the gun from his jacket pocket and holding it out.

"Swiped it from the other room when we saw you weren't there," Byers explained at his companions' looks of confusion as he handed the weapon to Mulder.

"Thanks," Mulder said distractedly, strapping the gun back in its place at his hip as he confirmed that he still had the rest of his belongings. "Shelly, get your coat, you're coming with me. Frohike, get Skinner back on the phone. I want the address of that warehouse."

"What about Scully?" Frohike asked, frowning.

Mulder sighed. "Give me a second."

Without knocking, he ducked into the small adjoining room where Scully had taken refuge. She sat on the bed, not looking up when he entered.

Mulder strode quickly to her side, wishing he had the time to talk and comfort her.

"What is it?" she asked, sensing his urgency and meeting his eyes.

"We've heard from Skinner," Mulder said. "He's got eyes on Hunt. I'm going to meet up with the team and help bring him in."

Scully immediately straightened up, slipping off the bed.

"I'm going with you," she said, as if there was nothing more obvious.

Mulder grabbed her by the arm as she tried to brush past him towards the door.

"Scully, stop." She pulled up short when he didn't let her go; usually it was an empty gesture, intended only to get his point across. Now, his grip remained, tight but not painful on her arm.

She turned her face back to his, their noses inches apart. Mulder raised his eyebrows slightly, only halfway challenging her; his gaze remained gentle.

"Mulder, I can't stay here," she said quietly, knowing if she spoke any louder it would have come out a plea rather than a demand.

Mulder sighed, relinquishing his grip only to let his hand slide up to her shoulder.

"Scully, I know you have more reason that anybody to want to get this guy, but I don't think you should be out of the hospital for a while yet. You've been through an ordeal that almost killed you a dozen times, for a dozen different reasons that we barely understand. You should be where you can be monitored in case your symptoms return."

Scully's jaw set as she stared up at him, not backing down.

"What if I remember something that could help?" she insisted. "I've been trapped in this hospital for days, and if he gets away because I stayed behind when we know I'm already getting better, then we'll never get any justice for all the people they did this to."

"And what if you collapse again out there?" Mulder shot back. "What if I have to choose between saving your life and catching these guys? Or worse, what if I'm not there to help you?"

Scully's stone face faltered as she realized he was right. After a split second, she recovered, brushing past him again.

"We're wasting time, Mulder," she said, turning back to meet his eyes again. "If you want me to stay, you're going to have to sedate me and strap me to the bed again."

Mulder bristled, tensing visibly at his partner's accusing words. For a fraction of a second he considered it, but quickly shook the thought away. Scully would never forgive him for that. And unfortunately she was right; they were wasting time. With a frustrated sigh, he followed her to the door.

"I'm going to grab my gun," Scully said as she crossed to the bathroom where her clothes and weapon were. She eyed the Gunmen sternly. "Don't let him leave."

"You mean _my_ gun," Mulder grumbled under his breath, but stayed where he was. Frohike gave him a questioning glance.

"G-woman decided she's coming with," Mulder sighed, with a nod to the bathroom.

"Ah," Frohike replied, not surprised, but also not interested in becoming the next subject of Scully's ire. "What do you want us to do?"

Byers, Langly, and Shelly all glanced up at him, the same question plain on their faces.

"You guys should probably follow us. When this is over we'll need to get Shelly into protective custody. I'd rather not leave her here without somebody armed. I don't really trust hospital security."

They all nodded and stood to leave. Scully stepped briskly back out of the bathroom, adjusting Mulder's ankle holster where it hung awkwardly at her hip. Her legs were too thin for the setup he had, so she had no choice but to fix it haphazardly to her belt.

She'd rolled the sleeves of her blazer up to disguise the massive tear where Hunt had ripped up to the elbow to inject her. The clothes she'd left the office in four days ago were rumpled and dirty, stained in several places with Mulder's blood. Still, it was miles better than being in scrubs. Scully almost felt like herself again as the walked to the car.

Mulder slipped into the driver's seat and started the car without a word. For several minutes they drove in uncomfortable silence.

"Mulder," Scully said finally, trying to ease the tension. He kept his eyes on the road, fully aware of her gaze. She sighed at his lack of response, knowing she deserved it for having forced his hand when he was just trying to keep her safe.

"Mulder, I know you were only trying to look out for me," she said softly, still studying his face. "But it would have driven me crazy to stay. These past few days have taken so much from me."

Finally Mulder turned, unable to ignore his partner any longer.

"Besides," Scully continued, trying not to sound desperate. "Someone has to watch your back, too."

Mulder said nothing, but his eyes softened. Though she's never speak of it, he knew Scully was still hurting from having thought he'd been killed. Knowing the depth of his partner's compassion and the intensity of her protective instincts, he could guess that she wasn't going to let him out of her sight until this was over.

After holding her gaze for another moment, Mulder turned his eyes back to the road. "Let's just get this guy, Scully," he murmured. "Let's end this before anyone else gets hurt."

Scully reached across to give her partner's hand a light squeeze, then took a deep breath, turning her attention back to the road and trying to prepare herself for the task they faced.

After several more minutes, they saw the flashing lights of the police barricade on the road up ahead. Pulling up, they saw Skinner talking with several other agents and a local police officer.

As Mulder put the car in park, he turned to look at his partner. She gave him a curt nod, her game face already on.

Mulder returned her nod, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Despite his concerns, it felt good to finally have his partner back at his side.

Skinner glanced over his shoulder as he heard them pull up, frowning slightly when he saw Scully.

"Skinner doesn't look very happy," Scully sighed, knowing she was going to get an earful for being out of bed.

Mulder chuckled. "Is he ever? Come on, Scully. Let's get this over with."


	29. Chapter 29

To anyone still reading, I have a confession...I've been cheating on you with like...six other fics.

I almost bailed but I'd have felt like garbage if I published anything new and left this unfinished.

So, here. Second-to-last chapter.

XXX

Skinner excused himself from the officer he'd been talking to, pinching the bridge of his nose before turning to regard his agents with pursed lips as they walked up, clearly intending to be a part of the manhunt.

Scully approached ahead of her partner, wearing a hard gaze and grimly set mouth. Skinner exchanged a wary glance with Mulder over her shoulder, hoping for a little backup. It didn't seem likely; Mulder had probably already tried to bargain with her with little or no success.

"You're looking much better, Scully," he sighed, knowing from the answering look he got that Mulder would be siding with his partner in any case. "But I know I don't need to tell you how risky it is to be running around, let alone back in the field so soon."

He glanced at Mulder, who looked almost worse off than she did, but wearing an identical mask of determination.

"Hell, you should both still be in the hospital, at the very least resting."

Mulder opened his mouth to argue, but Skinner cut him off, nodding toward the small dark stain on the front of his shirt.

"You're bleeding again, Mulder," he said testily, daring them to try to tell him they were both fine.

Mulder looked down distractedly, and Skinner saw in his expression that he had honestly not noticed. The blood didn't stand out as starkly on the dark grey t shirt as it had on his crisp white button-down, but it was still quite noticeable, and had to have been accompanied by some degree of pain. Skinner raised his eyebrows, waiting for a witty retort.

"Must have torn my stitches when Hunt was trying to kill me," Mulder muttered, pulling his coat over the stain. "We're wasting time here, sir. Scully and I can help you get this guy. Now why don't you fill us in so we can do it before anyone else gets hurt."

Scully unconsciously crossed her arms at the end of her partner's ultimatum, giving weight to his words and unwittingly advancing the image of them as an inseparable investigative machine, two halves of a well-functioning whole. Can't have one without the other, so you need us both, they seemed to say in tandem with their stubborn glares. Skinner found it both amusing and disgusting.

"You two are going to get each other killed one of these days," he grumbled, shaking his head. "And me, while you're at it." He sighed, then waved them over to where the rest of the agents were convened, coordinating with SWAT leaders and squad cars via radio.

"I had a team dispatched for surveillance when Shelly told me we'd find him here," Skinner started. "I don't know if he was onto us, but he was being very cautious as he entered the building. Best we can guess right now is that Hunt is in the north wing of the warehouse somewhere," he said, gesturing to a stretch of the giant building that sprawled before them.

On the other end of the complex , several unmarked cars were lying in wait, indicating that roads on that end had already been blocked off. "The building should be abandoned, but we know there's at least one other person in there with him. Could be a hostage or an accomplice, we aren't sure. I was waiting for more intel from you guys before pulling the trigger. Needless to say, I was hoping more for a call."

They all turned at a slight commotion as Shelly and the Gunmen pulled up. Langly's voice carried over the annoyed bark of one of the other agents.

"It's alright, they're with us," Skinner called, cringing slightly when he realized what he'd said. "Kind of."

Mulder and Scully ignored this exchange, staying focused on Skinner.

"Sir, let me and Scully lead a team in there to scope it out," Mulder urged him. "We need to take this bastard alive, and if you send in all the guns, he'll probably try to make a run for it and end up getting shot."

Skinner's eyes narrowed, exasperatedly wondering how they always managed to maneuver him into corners like this when he was their superior agent.

"Mulder's right," Scully said evenly, holding Skinner's gaze as he silently tried to call upon her usual propensity for common sense. "We've got a better chance than anybody at talking him out. And if that doesn't work, by all means, take him down. But without him, we have little hope of making a case on this."

Looking down at Scully, fierce determination standing out over her pallid complexion, the dark hollows beneath her eyes from days of being near death, Skinner sighed in defeat.

"Alright," he said gruffly. "You can work with Agent Seville's team. They're prepped and ready to go in." He nodded over to a tall, dark-haired man standing by the nearest FBI fleet sedan. Mulder and Scully nodded their thanks and moved to meet him.

"Agents," Skinner called as they walked away. In unison, they looked back over their shoulders at him. "I want you both in Kevlar. No more stapling shut your own bullet holes, or whatever the hell you did, Mulder."

Mulder's lip twitched up in a partial grin. "Sounds like a plan."

XXX

Agent Seville's team consisted of himself and five other field agents, already dressed in tactical gear and bulletproof vests. They quickly got Mulder and Scully suited up with vests and radios, as well as a proper hip holster for Scully. After briefing everyone on the layout of the building and their plan of approach, Seville started pairing them off into teams.

"Davey, you're with Bronson," he ordered, gesturing to a tall blonde woman and a stocky young man. "Agent Mulder, you'll be with Agent Reynolds. Hubbard-"

"I'm sorry, Agent Seville," Mulder interrupted, his eyes flicking to Scully. She was already looking at him with a look of veiled concern that surely mirrored his own. "I think I should stay with my partner on this one."

Seville frowned, but didn't outright disregard him.

"I was hoping that by splitting you up, we might double our advantage. If we encounter Hunt, I'd like to have one of you there to try at negotiation first."

"I understand," Mulder countered. "But Agent Scully's health may still be compromised. If anything happens-"

"No," Scully cut him off. "He's right, Mulder. We'll be more effective if we split up." She gave him a reprimanding look. "I'll be fine."

Agent Seville watched their exchange silently, waiting until the two agents turned their attention back to him before continuing.

"If that's settled, let's pair off and do this thing," he said. "Agent Hubbard, Agent O'Conor, you'll come in from the west entrance. Reynolds and Mulder will take the east. I want Davey and Bronson on the roof. Agent Scully and I will take the south entrance. The north is covered by our roadblock. He won't be getting past us."

Seville looked around the circle, letting his eyes linger briefly on Mulder, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. As the most experienced field agent, he'd paired himself with Scully on purpose, just in case. His look told Mulder that if anything were to happen, he'd take full responsibility. It made Mulder feel only marginally better, but he was grateful for the gesture.

They split into their teams, taking position and waiting for Seville to radio the go-ahead order. Crouched behind the eastern door, Mulder glanced at his partner. Agent Reynolds was probably in his late 20's, quiet and confident, with black hair and tanned skin. They regarded each other with professional detachment, exchanging only as many words as necessary.

At Seville's signal, they moved silently into the building, maintaining a 20-foot distance as they swept side to side, guns ahead. The first floor of the wing sprawled before them, mostly void of any equipment or furniture. Mulder looked to Reynolds, gesturing with a jerk of his head that he intended to round the corner into the next room. Reynolds nodded, doing a final sweep before following to cover Mulder.

A stretch of wide hallway followed, and the agents moved through it cautiously, eyes on the opening to the next area of the warehouse. Entering the next cavernous room, Mulder saw that about a quarter of it was furnished; the northeastern quarter. Seeing no other human activity, they moved in to find empty shelves, desks, and tables. Some lab equipment remained, halfheartedly tossed with white sheets as coverings, and here and there a trampled piece of paper lay on the floor. Mulder picked one up and studied it briefly.

After a moment he dropped it, nodding at Reynolds. There had been something here recently, but it had been ransacked, wiped almost clean in a hurried attempt to destroy evidence.

Mulder was about to motion for Reynolds to proceed to the stairwell when a shot rang out from above, making them both flinch. Mulder froze, eyes drawn to the ceiling as panic gripped him. Agent Reynolds was quicker to respond, keeping his gun raised as he ducked back into the hallway, grabbing his radio.

"Shots fired!" He barked into the receiver. "Repeat, shots fired!"

Mulder came to his senses, ducking back beside Reynolds and tensing on the grip of his gun, eyes still on the stairwell. There was no answering crackle from the radio.

"I repeat, shots fired!" Reynolds said again. "All teams, report!"

No response came, and Reynolds cursed under his breath.

"Alright, let's go up and-"

Before he could finish his sentence, another round popped off from the upper floor, echoing slightly in the concrete labyrinth.

Fear overriding his other senses, Mulder bolted up, running in a crouch to the stairs and taking them two at a time. Unintelligible cursing from behind told him that Reynolds had followed.

"We heard them too," the radio crackled, Agent Bronson's voice checking in. "No sign of him."

Reaching the second floor, Mulder held his gun out before him, sweeping the area before advancing. There was no sign of Hunt or the other teams, but after he'd walked ten or fifteen feet, he heard another shot and distant shouting from up ahead.

Heart beating in his chest, Mulder took off at a run, Reynolds several yards behind.

"Scully?!" He yelled, desperate to reconnect with her and figure out what had happened. A tiny, terrible voice in the back of his mind pointed out that there were three bullets unaccounted for, and their luck had seemingly run out years ago.

There was no response, but the shouting from ahead had stopped.

"Scully!?" He yelled again, his panic seeping into his voice.

"I'm here, Mulder," she called from ahead, her voice tight. "And so is Hunt."

Following her voice around the next corner, Mulder thudded to a stop in the semicircle of agents, Reynolds nearly running into him.

Agents Hubbard, O'Conor, and Seville stood in a scattered semicircle, their backs to him. Seville was already on his radio with someone below. Scully had turned, accepting Mulder's hand at her back as he came up behind her. On the floor before them lay Darryl Hunt, quite dead.

"Everyone's okay," Scully said quickly as she found his eyes. "None of our people saw Hunt alive. Whoever was with him must have shot him."

"I was first on the scene, saw the shooter running," Hubbard said, still breathing heavily. "I think I winged him before he got out the window onto the lower roof. Davey picked him off from above."

He gestured over to the broken window and Mulder and Scully followed. It was about a ten-foot drop to the lower roof, and the shooter had made it another fifty yards farther, almost reaching the access ladder that would have lead him to the ground. With no squad cars waiting on the end of the road, he may have escaped, if not for their sharpshooter on the top floor. His body had fallen forward, legs and arms bent as though he was still running.

"Come on, Scully," Mulder said, making for the stairs. "I want to take a look at that body."

Scully followed without a word, but as soon as they were out of earshot of the other agents, she gave him a questioning look.

"Why are we checking out the shooter, Mulder?" She asked as she holstered her gun. "Do you know who it is?"

"I might," Mulder said grimly.

As they approached the spot where the shooter had fallen, blood still pooling around him, they saw that the paramedics had beat them there. They'd already proclaimed his death and were preparing a body bag.

"Will you guys give us a few minutes?" Mulder asked briskly, in a tone that suggested that it wasn't a question. The medics nodded and retreated.

Scully watched her partner carefully as he turned the body over. The kill shot had taken him in the back, so his face was still recognizable. Seeing the man's face, Mulder exhaled heavily.

"I know this man, Scully," he said, standing again, looking angry and sickened. "I got a real good look before he black-bagged me and held a gun on me in the van with Richard Brontman."

Scully's heart sank.

"Are you sure?"

Mulder turned away, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I thought he was going to kill me, Scully. Yeah, I'm sure."

Scully looked from the dead man back up to the broken window where the agents and medics were cataloging evidence and getting Hunt's body packed up.

"If Brontman orchestrated Hunt's death, he's probably halfway across the country by now," she said, dismayed. "And anything connecting him to all this is probably being destroyed as we speak."

Mulder looked up with a start, remembering something. He reached for his cell phone and called Skinner.

"Sir, I need you to authorize a search warrant and send a team to the Shearing-Greensley Medical Research Clinic," he said quickly, praying that Skinner wouldn't ask him why.

"Already on it," Skinner replied, sounding like he had just come to the same conclusion as Scully. "Frohike told me why. I sent the Gunmen home and took Shelly into protective custody. I want you two to stay put, though. Give your statements to Agent Seville and make sure anything of relevance gets bagged and sent to Quantico. Don't even think about barging into that clinic."

Mulder glanced over his shoulder at his partner, remembering the look-alike body he'd found in the lab.

"We won't, Sir. For once, you and I are in agreement that that would not be a good idea."

"Good," skinner said, sounding relieved. "When you're done, for the love of God let somebody check you both out. I'll call as soon as we find anything."

After he hung up, Mulder turned to head back into the warehouse, giving Scully's shoulder a light squeeze as he passed. With a sigh, she followed.

After giving their statements, thanking Agent Seville, and stopping by the ambulance for long enough to be told that they should both take a few days off, they trudged silently back to the car.

When they got in, Mulder put the keys in the ignition, but made no move to start it. He let his head fall back against the seat, closing his eyes and exhaling heavily.

"We did everything we could have, Mulder," Scully said quietly from the passenger seat, watching him with tired eyes.

Mulder remained motionless. "It wasn't enough."

She sighed. "We don't know that yet."

After a long moment, he opened his eyes and sat up. He studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable. Finally, he turned away and started the car with a sigh.

"Let's go home, Scully."


	30. Chapter 30

One week later

X

7:12 p.m.

Scully sat sideways on her couch, legs crossed in front of her. She'd changed into more casual clothes when she got back from the office; all week she'd worn her best suits for meetings with the FBI board of directors and various lawyers, but now, in an attempt to relax, she sported a loose cashmere sweater and comfortable black pants.

On the coffee table beside her was a stack of files and paperwork from the seemingly pointless legal struggle. She'd forced herself to set it all aside in favor of a book she'd started reading earlier in the month, but she found herself rereading the same paragraph over and over, distracted by thoughts of the case.

It was hard to let go. Despite strict orders to stay home for several days following her ordeal, Scully couldn't keep herself away. She felt violated, and rightfully so- more than once she had caught herself frozen by the uncertainty of her thoughts and actions, by the possibility that her will might still not be her own.

Dodging Skinner at every turn, she'd thrown herself into the court proceedings, insisting that the investigative team double their efforts to find conclusive evidence.

She had spent hours poring over personnel files from Pallister Pharmaceuticals and the Shearing-Greensley Medical Research Clinic in hopes of identifying more of her captors, but her memories were still too foggy to implicate anyone specific without more evidence.

Mulder had been even worse; his vigor in driving the investigation matched her own, but while Scully was focused on finding answers and dispensing justice, her partner had lost faith in the government to deliver on either. He'd been slipping away to look into leads himself, often not even notifying her of his whereabouts. In the back of her mind, she felt concerned for his safety and a little hurt that he was ditching her, but she was too busy with her own efforts to go chasing after him.

The previous day, she'd been unable to reach him at all. She had left numerous voicemails, stopped by the office to scrawl a note on the desk, and checked with the transportation department to see if he'd requisitioned a car. He had, and at 5:30 it had yet to be returned. She didn't dare go to Skinner, but her fear was mounting that he'd gotten himself into some serious trouble. As a last-ditch effort, she drove to his apartment, letting herself in with her key when he didn't answer.

She surveyed the apartment quickly; everything was in its usual state of disarray, and the three messages on his answering machine were all from her. She had turned for the door, ready to call in the calvary, when he stepped in from the hall. His hand had been discreetly on his gun, alarmed by the unlocked door, but he let it drop when he saw her, looking wearily surprised to find his partner in his home.

"Scully, what's wrong?" He asked when he saw the look on her face. "What are you doing here?"

"Dammit, Mulder,'' she breathed in combined relief and exasperation. She turned away, trying to hide her fear and her anger, but he had already seen.

"I thought I had a lead," he explained quietly, though by the sound of his voice, it had been a dead end. "My cell phone died this morning. I figured you'd be busy all day, so…"

She sank into the couch, putting her head in her hands. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were bright with anger, and something less easily definable.

"They called the session off after an hour," she sighed. "There was nothing new to add. I've been trying to contact you all day." She bit her lip, looking at the floor. "You scared the hell out of me, Mulder."

His face softened a little and he took the seat next to her on the couch. "I'm sorry, Scully," he murmured. "I should have let you know what I was doing."

"You should have taken someone with you," she shot back bitterly. "Even if it wasn't me. These people might be laying low for now, but they know how close we came to busting them. If they catch one of us snooping around alone again, they won't play games this time."

He had started to reach for her, to comfort, to apologize, but something had stayed his hand. She held his gaze, for once letting him see how upset she was. After a moment, she had stood and walked to the door.

"I want justice as much as you do, Mulder," she had said quietly, looking back at him. "But I won't condone you getting yourself killed for it."

The following morning, he had met her in the office with coffees, his eyes quietly repentant. His hand had floated at her back as he walked with her to interview potential witnesses. The day had been mostly fruitless, but he had stayed present, and by the end of the day, Scully finally seemed a little less tense. Before turning to leave, she'd asked him to come by later so she could check on his wound and take the stitches out. He had made a joke about her marksmanship and she had rolled her eyes, signifying that all was forgiven; they were partners again.

Now, several hours later, she set her book aside, having decided that she wasn't going to be able to focus on it when her head was so full of other things. Instead, she got up to rummage in the fridge, groping around between condiments until she surfaced with one of the three beers that were the last dusty remnants of her social life. She cracked it and took a long swig, hoping it might help to subdue some of the unpleasant thoughts and memories that had been swirling around in her head.

A moment later, his soft knock came at the door. Scully set the bottle down to answer, smiling slightly as he stepped into her apartment.

"I was beginning to think you weren't going to show."

His easy grin made her feel instantly better. "Hey, doctor's orders," he chuckled. "Who am I to disobey? Besides, I figure this is better than having to go into the hospital again. Or trying my luck with a pair of scissors."

Scully rolled her eyes, reaching to take another swig of her beer. Mulder's eyebrows raised considerably into his messy hair.

"Agent Scully," he mock-chastised. "What's a guy gotta do to get one of those?"

She shot him a good-natured look. "Alcohol thins the blood, Mulder," she said pointedly.

She turned to grab her first-aid kit from the bathroom, laughing at his You've-got-to-be-kidding-me-Scully groan.

"Grab one from the fridge," she called back over her shoulder. "But if you bleed all over the carpet, you're paying my security deposit."

When she walked back to the kitchen, he made a show of sipping his beer, wagging his eyebrows at her. She set the first aid kit on the kitchen island, then patted the marble countertop.

"Sit."

Mulder set the beer aside, hoisting himself up onto the tall island. His legs dangled over the edge, but his torso was now at a good height for Scully to examine. Turning to the side to give her better access, he pulled his t-shirt over his head and set it on the counter; she'd insisted on inspecting the wound several times already, so he knew the drill.

If it were anyone else, he'd never have put up with it. But when Scully wanted to care for him, he usually let her; her concern was genuine and intense, and it made him feel like a human being of actual worth, which fell in stark contrast to his usual self-image.

And it was Scully who had shot him. The second night she'd been home after their ordeal, some of her memories had returned to her in her sleep. She had woken in a cold sweat, her head filled with the image of Mulder slumped against the wall, one hand bloody as it clutched his side, the other held up between them like a shield. The horror and disbelief in his eyes had kept her up for the rest of the night. She had called him at one point, not surprised when his answering tone held no hint of sleep, dismally feigning a reason other than that she'd needed to hear his voice.

She knew he would never in his life hold her accountable for it, but she still felt guilty, and angry, and afraid. He knew it was useless to try to make her feel better, so he let her forgive herself in her own way, which was to ensure, unquestionably, that he would be fine.

Thanks to her diligent ministrations, the wound was healing well; her gentle touches barely caused an ache. Mulder feigned irritation, but watched her with affectionate eyes. Scully wore her best composed, detached doctor face, but her fingers lingered just a little too long on his skin. They each knew the other too well to be fooled, but in one of their many unspoken agreements, neither said anything.

"Looks like we can probably take the stitches out today," Scully said with a faint smile, reaching for the first aid kit. Hers was more well-equipped than the standard bathroom-cupboard box of bandaids and Neosporin, and for good reason. As she rummaged through it for a small pair of forceps, she made a mental note that it needed some restocking.

Mulder did his best to sit up straight and hold still as she gripped the top thread with the forceps, holding it it place while she reached for the small surgical scissors.

"Are you sure you should be poking me with sharp things while drunk, Scully?"

Making no move to stop, Scully gave him a look.

"I've had half a beer, Mulder." She snipped the first thread, then peered up at him with a hint of a smirk. "Besides, you've survived worse."

"Can't argue with that," he murmured, watching with mild fascination as she deftly worked through the rest of the stitches, snipping with the tiny scissors and extracting with the forceps. A small pile of slightly bloodied threads accumulated on the counter.

When she was done with the front, she had him turn a little so she could access the exit wound on his back. Maybe it was just because he couldn't see what she was doing, but the second set of stitches hurt more coming out. He hissed a sharp breath through his teeth as one of the partially-scabbed pieces of thread pulled at his tender skin on the way out.

"Sorry," Scully said quickly, wincing a little at his pain. Normally she'd tell him to man up, but found that her stomach clenched with renewed guilt instead.

The next two threads came out with difficulty, and Mulder couldn't stop himself from flinching slightly under her hands.

"I'm fine," he said before she could apologize again.

The last piece came out, and Scully set the forceps aside, reaching for a cloth and the bottle of peroxide. She tipped the bottle over, letting it soak into the fabric, then wiped it carefully over the wound. It bubbled and burned where it came into contact with the open skin, but Mulder sat still. Small amounts of blood wiped off onto the white cloth, but as Scully continued to dab at the wound, the flow stopped. When she was satisfied with her work, she taped a gauze pad over each opening, then leaned back.

Mulder reached for his shirt, pulling it back over his head. It felt good to no longer have the tight, itchy stitches in his side. When he turned back to his partner, her eyes were downcast, her brow slightly furrowed as she avoided his gaze.

He watched her for a moment, then sighed. "Scully."

She turned away, scooping the discarded stitches into the bloodied peroxide cloth and throwing it all in the garbage. She grabbed the forceps and scissors, taking them to the sink. Mulder slid down from the counter and followed, leaning against the cupboards beside her and watching her pointedly as she ran the hot water and washed the tools. When she was done, she turned to escape to the bathroom, but Mulder caught her arm as she passed.

"Scully." He spoke more firmly this time, forcing her to meet his eyes. His gaze was gentle, concerned, and forgiving, even though to him there was nothing to forgive. As he searched her face, he realized that the bullet hole in his side wasn't the only thing that was bothering her.

"I'm sorry I ditched you yesterday," he said softly. Her distressed expression deepened, signalling that he was right on point. "I just….you had enough on your plate with this case. I didn't want you to have to worry about chasing after me."

Scully sighed, closing her eyes for a moment.

"Mulder, how am I not supposed to worry about you when you go off on your own, with no backup, without even telling me where to look if I don't hear from you in a day and a half?" She opened her eyes, and they pleaded with him to be rational. "You remember what Hunt said: 'your bodies are easier to deal with than your testimony'. I want answers too, but if you knock on the wrong door….I'd much rather put this case away unresolved than find you dead in a ditch somewhere."

She sighed. "Mulder, I think...I think it might be time to let this go."

Mulder stared at her for a long moment, and she could see the muscles in his jaw clenching as he tried not to get angry.

"Scully, we were lab rats to them," he said slowly, his voice low and tight. "They were going to kill you." He took a deep breath, not breaking her gaze. "They were going to kill you and dissect you in some hidden laboratory, like a bug under a microscope. They would have used you to advance their drug and hurt more innocent people. I can't let that go. I can't."

"I don't want to either," Scully said pleadingly, taking her partner's arm before either of them could fly off into a useless rant against the injustices they'd known. "But we almost didn't get out of this one, Mulder. We'll keep our ears to the ground; they'll slip up and expose themselves again, and next time we'll be ready. But we can't help anyone if we're dead. I know you know that."

Mulder held her gaze for another long moment, his jaw muscles still working as he bit back any number of angry retorts. After a minute, he pulled out of her grasp, turning away. He walked over to the couch, sinking into it stiffly and letting his head fall back onto the cushion. His bitterness was not directed at her, and she knew it, but it still hurt to see him shut her out.

Scully sighed and slowly finished tidying the kitchen, giving her partner space. When she was done, she grabbed both their forgotten beers and went hesitantly around to the couch. She held Mulder's bottle out to him wordlessly before taking her spot beside him. They sipped in silence for a moment before Mulder set his beer aside, sighing.

"Every time we manage to take one step forward, we get pushed back two. Even if we get everything right. I had their big secret figured out in the first couple hours of this case, but all I managed to accomplish was almost getting us both killed."

His fist clenched in frustration.

"There are no answers," he said bitterly. "There is no justice. Maybe it's time to give up on all of it."

Scully sat forward, looking at her partner in alarm.

"Mulder, what do you mean? You're not talking about closing the X Files?"

"Why not?" he asked miserably. "They haven't gotten me my sister. They've brought me nothing but grief. The only good thing to come of them was you, and if we keep going like this, I'm going to end up losing you, too."

"No," Scully said fiercely, grabbing her partner by the arm and turning him towards her. "Those are the risks we take, Mulder. What we do is too important to give up that easy." Her eyes bored into his, intense and sincere.

"You drew connections with this case that no one else could have," she said more softly, almost reverently. "Nobody would have ever thought to investigate the things that we did, and their experiments would have continued unhindered for God knows how long. Even if we didn't succeed in shutting the whole thing down, we had to have at least saved some lives."

"That's a far cry from winning, Scully, and I almost got you killed for it," he said tensely, lowering his gaze. "They'll pick up where they left off somewhere else in the country. Any deaths we may have prevented this time around are only postponed, reassigned. In the end, all my intuition and expertise didn't save anyone or change anything."

Scully was silent for a moment, her fingers on Mulder's arm tight as she let him spit the words at her coffee table, a necessary but incomplete cleanse of the failure and self-loathing that plagued him.

"You saved _me_ ," she murmured finally, her thumb rubbing unconscious circles into his shoulder as she coaxed him into looking at her. "However you feel about the events that got us into this mess, you put everything on the line time and again to get us out. You risked your life a dozen times and didn't give up even when it was me pointing the gun at you. I don't know if you trusted me or if you just had your determination, but either way you kept them from crushing us like they could have."

Mulder blinked down at her, his expression softening a little with affection and awe at her declaration.

"We're both still here," Scully said resolutely, allowing herself a tiny smile as he took her hand, lending unintentional emphasis to her words. "And that's not about to change. We stick together. We look after one another. We keep fighting."

Turning the rest of the way towards her, Mulder slipped his hand from hers to pull her into an easy embrace. Scully slid her hand up to cup the back of his neck, drawing his forehead down to hers.

He took a deep, calming breath, letting her words and her warmth comfort him. She was right, of course. She always was.

"Okay," he murmured, closing his eyes as he leaned into her support. "We keep fighting."

X

X

X

Author's Note:

AHH IT'S DONE!

Definitely not the ending I imagined when I first started this fic, but then again I never intended for it to get this long.

Anyway, I hope I didn't disappoint with this total non-ending, but I tried for weeks to make something more resolved happen, and it didn't feel right. I tried to keep everything very in character/in the mood of an episode, and let's be honest, these guys only actually resolve like one out of every ten cases at best. I never came up with a complete backstory for this shadowy corporation, and as was often the case in the show, I wanted to leave you guys with the bitter taste of never really finding out their secrets. The best thing about that decision is that bitter, hopeless-feeling endings open the door for so much great character and relationship building for Mulder and Scully. So I guess I'm trying to say - 'sorry, not sorry.' Haha. Thanks to everyone who stuck it out with me this whole time, you guys were the only thing keeping me going most of the way. As I mentioned last chapter, I've been working on a bunch of new stories, so keep an eye out for those! (disclaimer: they're mostly nothing like this story, and all much shorter)

Much love! Thanks for reading!


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